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An Elusive Science: The Troubling History of Education Research. By Ellen Condliffe Lagemann. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000. xviii, 302 pp. $25.00, ISBN 0-22646772-4.)
Ellen Condliffe Lagemann, professor of history and education and director of the Center for the Study of American Culture and Education in the School of Education, New York University, has written a bold, original, and important history. It is bound to create a stir. The book's thrust can be inferred from its title; indeed, "elusive" and "troubling" are too mild. The history of education research is not a cumulative advance. There is change, but it is difficult to discern any progress.
An Elusive Science is structured not as a consecutive narrative, but rather as a series of eight self-enclosed chapters, each dealing with a significant...