The question of what counts as good education research has received a great deal of attention, but too often it is conceived principally as a methodological question rather than an ethical one. Good education research is a matter not only of sound procedures but also of beneficial aims and results; our ultimate aim as researchers and educators is to serve people’s well-being. For their research to be deemed good in a strong sense, education researchers must be able to articulate some sound connection between their work and a robust and justifiable conception of human well-being. There is a good deal of history and convention against such a conception of researchers’ work. We need to consider the conditions needed if that conception is to be realized. Among the conditions is a concerted and cooperative endeavor for moral education among researchers and the people with whom they work—a context where questions of well-being are foregrounded, welcomed, and vigorously debated.
In this article we examine “meaning” and “action” within the “good” work of teaching and learning. One premise of our argument is that teachers and students deserve to experience this good. The second premise is that meaning is part and parcel of Being; the debate about meaning must include attention to meaning as a question/project of Being. We offer our experiences as an educational anthropologist, educational philosopher, and teacher educator who strive to retrieve and pursue meaning and Being as common resources and aspirations.
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