The research of evidence in special education: Epistemological and methodological issues

Abstract

Epistemological and methodological reflection on the research and analysis tools in the Special Education is going through a wide and ever current epistemological debate between quantitative and qualitative methods that globally affects the human and social sciences. This theme has fueled
the dialectic between quantity and quality, reaching a stage of “uncertain distinctness” (Campelli, 1996) also in the sciences of education. In the pedagogical field, the uncertain distinctness between quantity and quality can be traced back to those which Granese (1990) has defined as “contradictions
of epistemology”, in reference to the need for a critical review of educational epistemology (Mortari, 2007). It is a complex problem in which emerges the need to develop integrated methodological approaches to analyze and restore the complexity of the situations, experiences and contexts investigated with a close-up perspective, from the “reasons of each subject according to decision making” (Cottini, Morganti, 2015, p. 118).