1198 Traveling Beyond Dangerous Private and Universal Discourses Radioactivity of Radical Hermeneutics and Objectivism in Educational Research Mustafa Yunus Eryaman University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign In this article, the author explores several definitions of reading and evaluating educational research texts without finding deep private meanings or developing objective, scientific, and instrumental norms for evaluating quality of educa- tional research studies. Among these descriptions, the author emphasizes Gadamer’s weak poststructural model and Habermas’s critique of and contri- bution to it, aiming to replace the neoconservative objectivist and neoliberal subjectivist traditions with something of greater social and intellectual utility: a “dialectical and critical” theory of reading and evaluation of educational research. This alternative approach, based on philosophical hermeneutics, crit- ical theory, and practical philosophy, identifies understanding, interpreting, and evaluating a research text as a political, ideological, ethical, critical, gendered, sexual, racial, transformative, social, discursive, deliberative, and performed experience. The author argues that knowledge developed from this alternative approach represents a step toward the development of transformative political practices and progressive institutions to challenge the neoconservative status quo at intellectual, political, and practical levels. Keywords: radical hermeneutics; critical theory; No Child Left Behind; NCLB; National Research Council; NRC report; practical philosophy Radio Nietzsche was produced to be “radio-active” in both senses of the word: a transmission across distant space, and especially time, more or less subliminally received, and, as such, debilitating or even lethal for those unaware that this transmission indeed has a content and who persist in the mistaken belief that Nietzsche’s thought must-somehow-be liberating. —Geoff Waite (2004, p. 179) Qualitative Inquiry Volume 12 Number 6 December 2006 1198-1219 © 2006 Sage Publications 10.1177/1077800405276773 http://qix.sagepub.com hosted at http://online.sagepub.com