Cognitive Procedure of Explanation in Research on the History of Education and Pedagogical Thought

Abstract

The article reveals the essence and methodological potential of explanation as a cognitive procedure, which involves revealing the inner nature of the phenomenon under study and including it in the structure of certain regularities, laws, in the context of a holistic theory. It is emphasized that the explanation provides an understanding of historical and pedagogical phenomena and processes. The main types of explanations used in historical-pedagogical research (causal, teleological, nomothetic, ideographic) are considered, and the epistemological possibilities and limitations of each of them are shown. The article outlines ways to overcome the one-sidedness of the causal explanation based on monocausality: classification of causes, establishment of the nature of causal relationships and the combination of causes resulted in the version of events that became a reality; supplementing the causal explanation with a teleological one, which is based on the target aspects of people's activities in the past. Features of the use of nomothetic and idiographic approaches to explanation in research on the history of education and pedagogical thought are identified. The epistemological possibilities of the deductive-nomological explanation, aimed at identifying patterns and trends in the development of the studied phenomenon within certain chronological limits, are revealed. The article establishes the potential of idiographic explanation, which is focused on the analysis of singular and the search for some situational regularities – non-random connections between causes and consequences, devoid of the attribute of repetition. The necessity of combining nomothetic and idiographic approaches to explanation in historical-pedagogical research, which should be carried out considering specific research tasks, is proved.