Frameworks for Scientific and Social Understanding

Technical Approach to Knowledge

• Objectivity of Science: Emphasizes scientific knowledge and methodology through objective measurement, precise categorization, and accurate operational definition of concepts.
• Social World as Independent Variables: Utilizes inductive epistemology, moving from concrete observations to abstract generalizations, focusing on observable variables and techniques.
• Universal Theory: Seeks to understand commonalities rather than specific or differential elements. Assumes the constancy of behavior across time and space.
• Formalized Knowledge: Relies on mathematical language for its universality.
• Technical Guidance for Scientific and Instrumental Action: Action is founded on criteria of rationality, explicitly excluding ethical, political, and ideological considerations.
• Separation of Roles: Scientists (e.g., educators, psychologists) are responsible for developing the curriculum, while teachers implement the actions.

Practical Approach to Knowledge

• Rejection of Physical and Natural Science Models: Challenges the scientificity model derived from physical and natural sciences.
• Human Sciences vs. Natural Sciences: Human sciences differ from natural sciences, seeking understanding and interpretation of human reality, which comprises meanings, symbols, and interpretations. This approach views science as seeking solutions to theoretical problems, being contextualized and multifaceted.
• Aesthetic-Political Interest: The practical interest of knowledge in human sciences is aesthetic-political, not pragmatic. It does not aim for generalization.
• Understanding Human Action: To comprehend human actions, it is essential to connect interpretations with the interpretive context individuals use to assign meaning.

Critical Approach to Knowledge

• Sociopolitical and Ideological Interpretation: Views science and social phenomena through structural relationships that determine and shape human actions. Theory justifies practice. It demands political negotiation, debate, and social criticism, rejecting prescriptions from scientific knowledge. Science and knowledge are seen as social ideologies legitimizing specific knowledge and actions.
• Main Function: Not only to understand but also to describe and transform reality.
• Core Focus: Examines ways of reproducing power relations, emphasizing criticism and/or reconstruction.
• Critique of Objective Science's Social Control: Denounces the power of social control inherent in objective science. Theory, imbued with values and ethical components, transcends instrumental and practical approaches to foster reflectivity, transforming instrumental action into discursive action.