Protestant worldly asceticism: Its effect on theory in North American psychology, educational psychology, and education; and its implications for Canadian research in special education, 1968 to 1989

A resurgence of cognitivist psychology in the 1940s inspired a critical analysis of the accepted functionalist constructs of intelligence, learning, and human behaviour. This analysis has had little effect on researchers and practitioners in special education. The purpose of the study was to determine if there was some system of logic which sustained the entrenchment of the functionalist constructs of giftedness and learning disability. The study found that (i) functional psychologists, in accordance with the mandate of a Protestant worldly asceticism, attempted to operationalize Calvinist assumptions regarding correct human behaviour in formulating these constructs; and (ii) the majority of contributors to the Canadian special education literature between 1968 and 1989 continued to operationalize the functionalist constructs of giftedness and learning disability in the design of research problems. The findings of the study led to the conclusion that the entrenchment of functionalist constructs in special education is the result of a symbiotic relationship which exists between culture and social science. A relationship in which cultural assumptions, and the constructs of human behaviour they engender, are vindicated through the practice of a normal science which is, in turn, vindicated through the validation of its findings by the culture.