What Might Gadamer and Confucius Say About Educational Research? Towards a Better Understanding

This paper challenges the dominance of tacit empiricism in educational research by drawing on Gadamerian hermeneutics and Confucian modes of interpretation. Rather than grounding inquiry solely in measurable outcomes or predetermined procedures, the paper argues for cultivating historical and philosophical awareness as foundational to understanding educational experience. Through a commitment to methodological dynamism, it highlights how research can unfold through a dialogical movement that rejects prefabricated templates and resists the rigidity of linear empirical models. The paper further advocates for recognizing the multiplicity of embodied, relational, and moral truths that emerge across diverse contexts. Such truths cannot be fully captured by narrow empirical frames. They require modes of inquiry that intertwine understanding and acting, and that honor the unpredictable and evolving character of educational life. By integrating empirical resources with philosophical depth rather than positioning them in opposition, the paper proposes a more generous and expansive orientation to inquiry. Ultimately, the paper calls for reconsidering dominant research paradigms and disrupting entrenched dichotomies between the empirical and the conceptual. It calls for a more holistic, context attentive, and ethically informed approach to educational research, one that understands inquiry as an ongoing interpretive journey rather than a process of determining fixed truths.