A canonical text of the history of science, more in particular of educational research, reads as follows: ‘One cannot understand the history of education in the United States during the twentieth century unless one realizes that Edward L. Thorndike won and John Dewey lost’ (Lagemann, 2000, p. xi). Apart from whether or not one agrees with this bold claim (see, among others, Depaepe, 2010; Gibboney, 2006; Tomlinson, 1997), one has to admit that the kind of research that uses quantitative, i.e. statistical techniques, has gained most prestige in the 20th century (see, among others, Depaepe, 1993; Wooldridge, 1994; Richardson & Johanningmeier, 1997; Porter & Ross, 2003; Johanningmeier & Richardson, 2008). Various often interrelated factors are responsible for this, such as the belief in and the acceptance of the assumptions of positivism, the institutional growth of the educational market, the so-called scientisation of educational research, the professionalisation and academisation of the training of education(al)ists, the supremacy of meritocratic values in modern societies and the constant need to legitimate these by ‘objective’ and ‘neutral’ research. Unlike his colleague Dewey, with whom he worked for more than 40 years at the renowned Teachers College, University of Columbia, New York, Thorndike embraced this ‘trendy direction’ of educational research. In 1968 Thorndike’s biographer admiringly described him as the sane positivist (Jonçich, 1968). As a ‘cult figure’ Thorndike was the sign of the ‘new’ world with which the old continent could not keep pace: ‘… while Europeans were exploring the subjective and personal dimensions of experiences – using the eyes and insights of Bergson, Freud and Van Gogh – Americans are keeping their art representational, their novels realistic, making their philosophy empirical, their historiography scientific, and above all, their psychology behavioral’ (Jonçich, 1968, p. 55).