To show is to know? The conceptualization of evidence and discourses of vision in social science and education research

The demand for evidence in particular forms shapes contemporary educational policy, curriculum studies’ debates over the politics of knowledge “versus” wisdom, and research into classroom practice. This paper provides a genealogical trace that examines the arbitrary and historical linkage of discourses of vision (especially when vision becomes visuality) and the conceptualization of evidence (especially when evidence becomes empiricism-as-density). The analysis elaborates two counter-memories of post-ocular and post-empiricist debates over truth claims that educators have engaged amid the formation of Western social sciences. The counter-memories open consideration of the uneven legacies, politics and problems operating through forms of rationality now popular in ethico-redemptive sciences. The final section links nodal points in historical debates to the rethinking of evidence and vision in contemporary movements such as big data and mindfulness practices. The paper concludes with consideration of the changing, polarizing and reiterative aspect of networked power and different tactics of reason that social science, educational and curriculum inquiry face in the twenty-first century