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Naturalistic Generalizations
ROBERT E. STAKE AND DEBORAH J. TRUMBULL
Center for Instructional Research and Curriculum Evaluation
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
As educational researchers and program' evaluators, we are interested in improving instructional practice. In
this paper we will argue that naturalistic inquiry provides a neglected element in facilitating change and
improvement in practice.
Anyone who examines the current literature on planned change or on the improvement of practice- not only in
education, but in any social endeavor- might come to the conclusion that there are only two ways to get better. One
way is to obtain better information and to use it more rationally. The other way is to come to a deeper understanding
of oneself and to then find better 'Ways of relating to and communicating with one's associates.
In the first way, the required better information is assumed to come from scientific studies which approximate,
as nearly as conditions allow, the experiments of the natural sciences. A more rational use of this information
generally involves careful and explicit plans with clearly stated goals and objectives and timelines.
The second commonly recognized path to change or improvement involves work done by individuals or groups
guided by psychotherapeutic expertise.
Almost absent from mention is the common way in which change or improvement is accomplished, the way
followed intuitively by the greatest and least of thinkers. Is it embarrassing to mention a commonplace? One may
change by adding to one' s experience and re-examining problems and possible solution intuitively.
We maintain that this third method of planned change occur is at least as important as the other two and that
program improvement efforts should more often rely upon the experiences or intuitions of the practitioners involved.
We believe that program evaluation studies should be planned and carried out in such a way as to provide a
maximum of vicarious experience to the readers who may then intuitively combine this with their previous
experiences. The role of the program evaluator or educational researcher would then be to assist practitioners in
reaching new understandings, new naturalistic generalizations1.
One would expect this approach to lead to evolutionary change rather than the replacement or re-creation kind
of change implied in most literature on the reform of social and educational practice. (We add these thoughts at a
time when evolution al creationism is a highly-publicized issue in science teaching.)
Before discussing evolutionary change or naturalistic generalizations further, let us consider some efforts to
change educational practice in the United States. There is now a long history of federal involvement in projects
aimed at creating change in schools. These projects have ranged from the writing of new curricular materials,
creation of new programs for teacher education to new models for administering educational programs. Lindblom a
Cohen2 noted an almost exclusive reliance of these projects on the aggregation of new knowledge. Researchers,
developers and evaluators were to produce new knowledge which was “supposed to replace the ordinary and
presumably deficient knowledge of local practitioners3."
Concurrently with these federal projects, the schools themselves were feeling pressure generated by a society
facing serious dislocations. Professional people were finding their train insufficient, their old knowledge challenged.
Even without these pressures, there seems to exist for educational practitioners a press to change. Education is
a strange profession in that seldom can a practitioner know that a task finished. That needed feeling of
accomplishment and completion is often lacking. An administrator may work out a brilliant new scheduling plan
only to find that the community does not like it. A teacher's time-tested workbook may prove unsuited for the
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newest class because of changes in the students, ... in maturity, previous experiences, relationships with parents, and
any number of other factors.
Into this milieu the professional plunges, clutching math text or management plan, hoping to survive, hoping to
help others to survive. There is no way such a professional can be successful however she defines success-- in all
cases, perhaps even with the majority of cases. Such a professional must live with the niggling sensation that she
could do more, ought to do more. Thus, for most educational practitioners there exists an inherent pressure to
change, to improve, to do better next time.
We had then, major federal projects aimed at producing new knowledge to improve schools and, within the
schools, a desire to change. One would expect this juxtaposition to gain a significant change. Many observers,
among them Cowden and Cohen3 and Goodlad4 have noted that such was not that case, that the federal programs
resulted in much less change than expected.
Overemphasis on Knowledge-based Change
Perhaps because education itself is so knowledge-oriented, many of us have a tenacious expectation that
knowledge can make sick education well. In the research community and elsewhere, the general expectation is that
the purpose of research is to produce formal generalizations which can then be used by practitioners to guide their
own practice in their own particular situations. It is regularly implied.
Research leads to knowledge which leads to improved practice.
What do we do when such seems not to be the case? In a review of the impact of curricular research in
education a few years ago Ed Short said:
A number of researchers have redefined the scope of the phenomena and have conceived it, not
as a problem of 'research into practice,' but as one of 'knowledge production and knowledge
utilization.5"
The phrase creates an image: two towering enterprises, Knowledge Production and Knowledge Utilization,
rising up and reaching out to one another, perhaps to form a golden arch. It is an attractive image, particularly to
someone justifying a research budget or planning the implementation of a newly written curriculum. Certainly, this
is sometimes the right model for managing research, attempting to maximize the production of knowledge that
would facilitate reconsideration of practice. And, certainly, in retrospect, changes in practice can almost always be
described in terms of changes of knowledge.
But according to Short's findings, backed up more recently by Lindblom and Cohen2 and Carol Weiss6,
knowledge production and knowledge utilization are seldom enjoined. In education, the proposed uses of new
knowledge, teachers and administrators, seem to have little use for most research findings, and the new knowledge
produced by large-scale projects.
A frequent response to this situation is to assume people just do not know how to understand research findings.
As a federal official wrote, "Very few people are professionally trained to build upon research findings or to market
good educational ideas"'. This response then argues for creating still another enterprise, Knowledge Dissemination,
to provide a scaffolding to connect our two towers.
It is a dream that distracts from the tasks at hand.
Directing attention to knowledge production and utilization diminishes attention to practice. Building
dissemination mechanisms diminishes emphasis on practice, Some among us should continue to ask, "Research into
practice- how?" But these researchers will likely not be immediately useful. Traditionally, researchers have had
scant interest in studying the entwining, personalistic, and crisis-like problems of daily -practice. Rather, they
conceptualize new systems expecting orderly circumstances and dispassionate practitioners. They fiddle with
models. But for practitioners, and the helpers of practitioners, the well-being of daily practice is the goal.
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Sometimes that well-being requires changed practice, sometimes preserved practice, but always practice. The end
product desired is not knowledge-about-practice or knowledge-about-subject matter. Formal knowledge is not
necessarily a stepping stone to improved practice. This knowledge may be helpful in the long run, but in each
teaching dilemma the importance of formal knowledge about teaching or about curriculum remains to be shown.
We maintain that practice is guided far more by personal knowings, based on and gleaned from personal
experience. And change in practice, or resistance to change, are often directly related. Because of this personal
aspect it will sometimes be more useful for research to be designed so that
Research can evoke Vicarious Experience which leads to Improved Practice.
The reader may prefer to define vicarious experience as just another form of knowledge, so the statement at the
beginning of this section would remain in force. It seems to us though, that, the kind of knowings generated by
experiencing, whether direct or vicarious, are different from the knowings which are the result of research activity.
Research typically aims to produce explicit, articulated, formal knowledge. The knowings which arise from
experience are more tacit", implicit, personalistic. These are selfgenerated knowings, naturalistic generalizations,
that come when, individually, for each reader, each practitioner, new experience is added to old1.
Formal research reports may contain the detailed description necessary to generate vicarious experience for
readers, then allowing the development of naturalistic generalizations. But the formal research report does not
usually have a commitment to provide this vicarious experience. Naturalistic research, as we conceive of it, is
impelled by this commitment. The naturalistic researcher seeks to present selected raw data-portrayals of actual
teaching and learning problems, witnessings of observers who understand the reality of the classroom, words of the
people involved. These raw data provide the reader with vicarious experience which interacts with her existing
naturalistic generalizations, formed previously from her particular experience.
To further extend the experience, naturalistic research reports can stimulate discussion and dialogue among
practitioners, serving as a springboard to further examine the situation portrayed in the report.
Vicarious Experience
The vicar is a substitute, performing a service for those not well placed to perform for themselves. The naturalistic
researcher observes and records what readers are not placed to observe for themselves, but who, when reading the
descriptive account, can experience vicariously the various perplexities. Mary Lee Smith, one of the Case Studies in
Science Education vicars, quoted a teacher at her Fall Rive, Colorado, site:
Teachers are an extension of the parent and as such should teach the value system that is
consistent with the community. The community has a vested interest in the schools and has a right
to demand that certain values be taught and certain others not be taught9.
A teacher in rural Illinois told Alan Peshkin:
I've been accused of being a Communist and an atheist. Once the science teacher and I brought
two classes together to discuss Darwin. We were studying the Twenties in history and talking about
the Scopes trial. A few periods later a kid came by and asked if I was an atheist. These students are
riled by a discussion of evolution.10
Situations such as these, high school science teaching, could be studied by researchers in the two ways we have
focused on here. A researcher whose aim was to generate formalistic generalizations, formal knowledge, would
probably isolate and attend to a few key concepts or variables, perhaps curriculum authenticity and teacher
responsibility. At issue might be the degree to which evolution can or should be part of the high school curriculum.
By focusing on a small number of variables abstracted from the situation, such research would neither seek nor
present evidence such as the direct testimony contained in the two quotations above. Rather, the data collected
would be that specific to the particular issue, germaine to the variables considered. Other information would be
considered irrelevant and usually ignored.
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The other line of research, the naturalistic generalization yielding way, would cast a wider net, gathering direct
testimony, rich description, and other phenomenological data. The naturalistic researcher would choose from these
data the most coherent or relevant, but leave them in a more or less natural state in the resulting report.
Certainly the naturalistic researcher must focus and delimit her study, attending to one or two major issues. But the
naturalistic researcher will present the data in a more, rather than less, natural form, leaving in the richness and
ambiguities and conflicts which are part of daily experience. The reader then can weigh the given data against her
experience and perhaps confront previous interpretations and temper convictions formerly held. These changes
affecting the naturalistic generalizations of each reader may relate to the interpretations of the researcher, but they
may be in response to aspect of the data not considered by the researcher. Consider, for example, the nuances and
suggestions which shimmer behind the previous quotations from two teachers. They inform the reader much
differently than do abstract variables.
If the classroom habitat of the practitioner is something tomorrow it otherwise would not have been, the
practitioner's convictions may have been altered by such vicarious experience as a naturalistic research report
provides. To quote Thomas Flanagan in The Year of the French :
We possess ideas, but we are possessed by feelings. They lie too deep for understanding, astir
with their own secret life and carrying us with them.11
The Elements of Action
Fig. I represents a rough sketch of the lineage of pedagogic action, probably any action. It is of course
simplistic but attempts to identify the ideas and feelings involved. It does not name all the influences on practice nor
all the pathways by which practice can be affected. It may, however, help to present the way in which we see
experience as influencing practice.
We have labeled the outcome on the right Practice. It could have been labeled Action. The practitioner or actor
is someone responsible for part of an educational system- a classroom, a school, a district, a national agency
perhaps. The person is moved to act, to continue an activity, to refrain from acting, to resist acting, only when
sufficient external demand or internal conviction arises.
Most efforts to change educational action, certainly many promulgated by the federal government, have
pursued the more authoritarian external demand approach. The order to change is issued from higher administrative
level. The -innovation literature discusses the problems engendered by this approach. Some of these external
demand efforts have attempted to soften the negative consequences of demand by making the proposed changes too
good to resist', perhaps by investing in workshops or fellowships for practitioners.
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But still, practitioners consistently have rejected, however subtly, new approaches, systems, or curricular
materials urged by outside demand.
There have been organized change efforts that avoid external demand and seek to influence the convictions of
practitioners so that adoption is by choice. In the Case Studies in Science Education it was found that reforms were
rejected by teachers not because they pursued less worthy objectives but because the new teaching style required did
not leave teachers in command of the responsibilities they considered to b-- critical, including those of maintaining
student obedience and a preparatory outlook12.
We suggest that this indicates that these organized change efforts have failed in part because the important role
of personal experience and conviction in guiding practice was not acknowledged. In the sketch for Fig. I we have
indicated that, a practitioner's personal convictions are influenced by understandings and faith. George Henrik von
Wright13 indicated that understanding is reached, through dialogue and rumination, from pools of knowledge, both
personal and explanatory. Or as we have called it, from naturalistic and formalistic generalizations.
Again: the persuasion of the research and practitioner community is to emphasize the formal generalizations, the,
explanations. We speak not against such knowings but claim they are too exclusively relied upon, too regularly
presumed to be the preferable messages. If we look on the sketch the leverage point for change too often neglected is
the disciplined collection of experiential knowledge.
A research report might present the correlation between the time spent tutoring students individually and their
gain scores on a math achievement test. The report might also identify personality variables which contribute to the
success of the tutoring. This would be one way of knowing about tutoring effects.
A naturalistic research report might deal with the same sample studied, but would present very different data.
The report might present a full description of some of the noteworthy interactions between the teacher and students
being tutored. The report would seek to portray the major aspects of the process which emerged as the process was
studied over time. As much as possible, each person described would be described as an individual person, with the
idiosyncrasies which individuals have. A reader should have some sense of the experiences which comprise tutoring
after reading this report.
Curricular research and instructional research can be organized, by intent and with sophistication, to provide
the raw data to furnish vicarious experience to help the reader/teacher develop new naturalistic generalizations to
guide practice.
We do not mean to imply that teachers are not moved to change by formal knowledge. They may respond to the
essay of a curriculum specialist urging an examination of the story of Genesis, or to an article documenting student
attitude score distributions about inclusion of aboriginal myths in literature classes. Teachers are often moved by
such formal knowledge.
They are also moved by what other teachers are experiencing, what the community of their school expects, how
their students respond. In a rural consolidated school, the only science teacher said:
Evolution has never come up as an issue. I don't know. My personal view is probably
"safe". I don't see any divergence between the theory of evolution and a religious viewpoint. I
suppose I'm not really radical. Maybe that's the reason I haven't had any "feedback". If I were an
atheist, I suppose that might, present a problem. And the students don't make it a problematic
discussion either. Never had any one do that. Here again, our students are pretty much of one
mind. They're pretty "closed" in the ideas they have. I've barely had any "feedback" from the
community14.
Or read again the teacher quoted by Peshkin. He too was moved to act by student response, although that action
was different from that of the teacher above.
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There are problems with naturalistic research and its emphasis on the experiential. It is difficult work. Also,
because it attends to the issues which emerge from the situation studied, it may pay little heed to the momentous
issues confronting Society.
Tom Fox's critical remarks about the Case Studies in Science Education indicated that our case study writers
did not deal with the great curricular questions facing education. We assume those are such things as
Does the fate of the society depend on a correct analysis of science education ?
How much effort should go into discovery and perpetuation of the common culture, and to what
extent is it now properly represented by the schools' curricula?
To what extent does a teacher owe something to a child's future beyond that which the parent's
choose and prefer?15
In naturalistic studies a few questions on such a global scale arise, but many would not unless the fieldworker
were to push and probe for them. And such pushing and probing is considered by many to be inappropriate for
naturalistic research. In the Case Studies a great many global questions were raised, but too infrequently to
aggregate across sites, or across teachers 'within a site. These are not questions important, or at least discussed, in
daily practice. Some research does need to address ' the global questions, but we hope we have made a case for
research which addresses the emic issues, the issues of importance within the individual case studied.
Research which attends to the events of daily practice can aspire to yield the best possible knowings for
inservice education, for modifying practice. According to Lawrence Stenhouse:
As I read the situation, inservice development needs curriculum development and research in
teaching. The error has been to see inservice education as the servant of curriculum reform rather than
curriculum as a research field to serve inservice education16.
The argument that vicarious experience data are neglected knowledge for the understanding and improvement
of practice has a political rationale too. To return emphasis to classroom events is to return a certain control to the
classroom teacher ... not assurance of democracy, but an enablement of democracy. And practically speaking, even
in situations where teachers are pleading for someone else to specify what their curriculum responsibilities are,17 it
is likely that neither parent nor state will be served if external demands on the teachers are inconsistent with their
convictions. Nor can we expect the degree of change we might desire if teachers are not helped to develop the
naturalistic generalizations which will guide new modes of practice.
To summarize then, we have seen that many efforts to produce change in the schools have failed to do so,
despite a desire for change. We posit that this is because the major way in which change occurs has been rejected.
The dominant belief is that formal generalizations, conceptual knowledge, is the essential ingredient of improved
practice. Our position is that practice is guided largely by tacit knowings, by naturalistic generalizations, formed
from experiencing, often implicit. Change effort research has failed to honor naturalistic generalizations. It has not
presented practitioners with the vicarious experiencings which could alter conviction and practice in the schools.
REFERENCES
1.
“Generalizations” by Robert E. Stake, presented at the annual meting of AERA, April 1980.
2.
Usable Knowledge: Social Science and Social Problem Solving by Charles E. Linblom and David Cohen. New
Haven: Yale University Press, 1979.
3.
Divergent Worlds of Practice: The Federal Reform of Local Schools in the Experimental Schools Program by
Peter Cowden and David K. Cohen, Cambridge, MA.: Center for the Study of Public Policy, Summer, 1979.
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4.
Looking Behind the Classroom Door by John Goodlad and M. Francis Klein. Worthington, Ohio: Charles A.
Jones Publishing Company, 1974.
5.
Status of Knowledge Production and Utilization in Curriculum by Edmund C. Short , presented at the annual
meeting of AERA in New Orleans, February, 1973.
6.
Using Social Research in Public Policy Making edited by Carol Weiss. Lexington, MA : Lexington-Heath,
1977.
7.
Ten Critical Issues in Educational Reform by Allen A. Schmieder, Journal of Teacher Education, Spring 1975,
26 (1), pp. 18-23.
8.
The Tacit Dimension by Michael Polanyi. Garden City, New York Doubleday and Company, 1966.
9.
"Teaching and Science Education in Fall River" by Mary Lee Smith. Booklet 11, Volume 1, in Case Studies in
Science Education, edited by Robert E. Stake and Jack Easley. Urbana, IL: CIRCE, University of Illinois, 1978.
10. "Schooling at BRT: A Rural Case Study" by Alan Peshkin. Booklet IV, Volume 1, in Case Studies in Science
Education edited by E. Stake and Jack Easley. Urbana, IL: CIRCE, Univ. of Illinois, 1978.
11. The Year of the French by Thomas Flanagan. New York: Holt, Reinhart, and Winston, 1979.
12. Case Studies in Science Education edited by Robert E. Stake and Jack Easley. Urbana, IL : CIRCE, University
of Illinois, 108.
13. Explanation and Understanding by George Henrik von,Wright. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1971.
14. "School at BRT: A Rural Case Study" by Alan Peshkin. Booklet IV, Volume 1, in Case Studies in Science
Education edited by Robert E. Stake and Jack Easley. Urbana, IL : CIRCE, University of Illinois, 1978.
15. "Did We Really Say Influence Policy Through Naturalistic Inquiry ?" by G. Thomas Fox Jr., presented at the
annual meeting of AERA in Los Angeles, 1981,
16. Review of the Status of Precollege Science, Mathematics, and Social Studies Educational Practices in U.S.
Schools by Lawrence Stenhouse (in press).
17. Case Studies in Science Education edited by Robert E. Stake and Jack Easley. Urbana, IL: CIRCE, University
of Illinois, 1978.