Statistics reasoning and its “acting” in educational policy

• In an important book about numbers and social affairs, Theodore Porter (1995) begins by asking: “How are we to account for the prestige and power of quantitative methods in the modern world? How is it that what was used for studying stars, molecules and cells would have attraction for human societies?" To consider these questions, Porter continues that only a small proportion of numbers or quantitative expressions have any pretence of describing laws of nature or “even of providing complete and accurate descriptions of the eternal world” (Porter 1995: viii-ix). Numbers, he argues, are parts of systems of communication whose technologies create distances from phenomena by appearing to summarize complex events and transactions. The objectivity of numbers appears as mechanical, following a priori rules that project fairness and impartiality, numbers are seen as excluding judgment and mitigating subjectivity. © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2020.

Ämnesord

SAMHÄLLSVETENSKAP  -- Utbildningsvetenskap (hsv//swe)

SOCIAL SCIENCES  -- Educational Sciences (hsv//eng)

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