In this article we examine the nature, scope, and significance of basic philo- sophical issues in the preparation of researchers. Following a brief review of the history of educational research and a discussion of the philosophy of science supporting much of this research, we present and discuss two central assertions in the context of the growing prominence of paradigmatic and methodological pluralism in education and the human sciences. The first assertion is that the curriculum for preparing researchers in education con- tinues to be dominated by the epistemology of logical empiricism, the philos- ophy of science undergirding the quantitative research tradition. The second assertion is that research education tends to place a disproportionate empha- sis on technical methods and procedures, with little attention given to the philosophical, moral, and political values that underpin procedural practices and that frame, however tacitly, the context for know
