An Introduction to the Effects of Philosophical Bias on Early Childhood Theory

This post will start a series on how philosophical bias plays into early childhood theory and research.  Researchers in the humanities often do not allude to the impact philosophical bias can have on their research.  Many times these researchers want to appear to be as impartial as research that uses hard data.  However, the nature of research in the humanities cannot be divorced from its philosophical base.  That will be the topic of this post.

The Truth about Bias in Research
Americans live by their research.  However, most of the time we Americans have no idea how bias plays into that research.  We also seem to be very quick to forget how research of even a year ago has been completely disputed by the latest research.  In the humanities, all subjects involving people and their cultures, the data collected for research must come from questionnaires or observation.  Unlike research done using strictly scientific methods involving hard data, this soft data lends itself to bias in ways that hard data does not.  Hard data can be measured and the results computed with mathematical operations.  Soft data can be manipulated using statistical methods but the exact measurement aspect does not exist.  Mind you, even research done with scientific methods can be skewed by bias, but when soft data is used, removing bias remains nearly impossible.  I will explain this completely in the next several sections.

Worldviews
What is a worldview?  It is how a person defines life and existence on this planet.  Everyone has a worldview whether they are religious or not.  Atheists define life in the absence of an all powerful God.  All of the world religions define life according to the tenets of their faith.  We all hold to some belief in the purpose of life or the laws governing the concept of life on this planet.  Our worldview defines us as people.  We function according to our worldview whether we realize it or not.  Therefore, when we propose theories that deal with the human experience, our worldview biases those theories whether we realize it or not.  Our worldview constitutes what we consider to be important and unimportant.  We cannot divorce our worldview from our theories.  It is impossible.

The Foundation - Priorities
This brings me to priorities.  Priorities constitute the ranking system we give to the various and assorted aspects of life.  It is what we consider important or unimportant.  We all have priorities.  Every time we make a decision our brain pulls from our personal list of priorities.  We do this without even realizing that it happens.  When two items from our list come into conflict with one another, the brain will go with the one most important to us.  Sometimes our perceived priorities and our actual priorities do not match.  Oftentimes this shows itself in what we consider bad decisions.  For example, a person may believe that family has a higher priority than wealth, but every time a decision must be made, acquiring wealth always triumphs what the family needs.  Sometimes this is so subtle we do not realize that our actual priorities and our perceived priorities do not match.  However, when we find ourselves making excuses for our choices, that should be a clear sign that our perceived priorities and actual priorities are not in agreement.  Most people have discrepancies between their perceived priorities and actual priorities.  Very few people are so in tune with who they are as people that both of those priorities agree.  Our actual priorities flow from our actual worldview, which can also be different than our perceived worldview.  These actual priorities govern our thoughts and our actions.  They are the rules we live by.  If a person feels that his/her priorities seem out of whack, that person needs to take a good hard look at their actual worldview.  We as human beings very often give lip service to many tenets of thought without actually internalizing those tenets.  We also internalize some tenets of thought without regard to how that fits into our perceived worldview.  Americans seem to be especially guilty of the second phenomenon especially when it comes to the "latest research."  We hardly ever filter new research by its bias and therefore, oftentimes find ourselves conflicted without knowing why we are conflicted.  Many other cultures hold harder to their worldviews and automatically filter new information by their worldviews.  We as Americans tend to flip flop quite a bit in our actual worldview.  This causes us to have a constantly changing list of priorities without even realizing it is happening.  Remember our actual priorities will follow our actual worldview.  Our brains will make decisions based on that list of priorities.  This makes it extremely important for people to understand their own worldview and how new information affects that worldview.  Bias is a big deal.  When we accept information just because it is information and we never filter it according to its bias, that will make us wishy-washy people or brainwashed people.  We need to understand what we believe about life and why we believe that way.  This affects our priorities.

How Priorities Form Theories
When researchers in the humanities postulate theories, the form those theories take depends greatly on their own priorities.  We often do not think about that process, but when we theorize in the humanities, we are often trying to give credence to our own priorities and prove them to be the most important.  This is how bias enters the theoretical process in the research of the humanities.  We cannot escape it.  Our worldview dictates our priorities.  Our priorities shape our theories.  Remember theories are educated guesses.  Laws in the humanities do not exist.  Laws can only be established when dealing with physical properties such as gravity.  The human race consists of so many different customs and cultures that establishing laws of human nature runs afoul of a culture somewhere on the planet.  Many people in the Western world would have you believe that laws of human nature exist, but people of other cultures would disagree wholeheartedly.  Culture plays a major role in how people function and interact.  We cannot divorce a people's culture from the theories that people produces.  This is true of Western culture as well as every other culture on the planet.

How Priorities Affect Conclusions
Now we come to the heart of the matter.  If a researcher's priorities have set the parameters of a theory, does that not also affect the conclusions of the research?  Most researchers set out to prove a certain point to be true.  They place importance on the point and whether they admit or not, the whole structure of the research project leads in that direction.  Some researchers do this blatantly.  Some researchers do try to remain unbiased, but the bias remains.  If you find a research project that proves the opposite of what the researchers set out to prove, that is a rare humanities research project indeed.  Therefore, when considering the conclusions of a research project, the underlying philosophical bias must be taken into consideration.  This is especially true when the research project is trying to prove the tenets of another culture to be wrong.  You cannot compare apples and oranges.  You cannot prove the rightness or wrongness of a point when dealing with opposing cultures.  The results of the research only hold for the culture in which it was conducted.  Any other use of research belittles other people's worldview.

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