An End to Qualia? Dennett's Defense of Heterophenomenology

Frontiers in Educational Psychology
By Daniel C. Dennett. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2005. 199 pp. Cloth, $28.00.

Russell Waugh's edited collection, Frontiers in Educational Psychology, contains an eclectic group of chapters. But one thing holds it together: a commitment to refining measurement techniques, with one of the major foci being the use of Rasch measurement models and an accompanying interest in sponsoring the wider use of linear measures in order to "discover any laws in education" (p. x). I am skeptical of the search for the kind of "laws" that I think Waugh implies here, but this should not be taken as a negative assessment of the book overall. Within the limited confines of the measurement community, I am certain that the volume indeed is a contribution. This said, I shall not comment extensively on whether Frontiers in Educational Psychology does indeed push the boundaries of that specific field. Rather, I am concerned about a different kind of boundary, that which seems to separate some parts of the field of educational psychology from a recognition of the social rootedness of its object of study. The boundaries here are "strongly classified" (to borrow a concept from Bernstein, 1977) and act much like impermeable membranes that keep out much that should be of interest to anyone deeply concerned about real-world education.