The Nature of Educational Research and Inquiry

Dr Dimitra Hartas

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Current context of educational research

• Education is at a crossroads: The traditional model of education, based on the Enlightenment principles and the economic reality of the industrial revolution is no longer applicable. In a rapidly shifting landscape of economy, we educate citizens for a model of economy that is difficult to predict.

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Change of paradigms in education?

• Education faces challenges because: • i) the purpose of education is redefined, • ii) the nature of learning / educating is

changing • iii) the lack of congruence between

educational practices as they operate at a local level and educational policies at a global level

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What is education for?

• A vision of society? Who is the citizen of tomorrow? (moving target itself: globalisation, shifting of populations, diversity, markets)

• Citizens to engage with their communities and offer solutions to complex problems of environment, citizenship, poverty, social justice

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The nature of learning

• Changes in the spatial and temporal nature of learning

• lifelong learning and the digital revolution• instrumentality of knowledge (learning as a

means to an end)• The debate on subject matter/ reductionistic

curriculum• A culture of therapy or intellectual tools

(Learner as a fragile entity) 5

Instrumentality of learning

Instrumental rationality, the view that social issues and problems can be resolved instrumentally, through research that emphasises efficiency, accountability and shared norms and assumptions. This is evident in educational reforms whose goals are efficiency and educational effectiveness.

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Reflexivity

• The discourse on targets, effectiveness and efficiency, rather than purpose or values dominates the educational systems in many western countries. In a context where education is defined by measurable outputs, consumer responsiveness, efficiency, public inspection and profitability, research is less likely to account for the historical and political context of education.

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Policy - practice continuum

• What is the link between current pedagogy and tomorrow’s citizens?

• Does educational policy and practice (and the research that underpins them)focus too much on the past and the present of knowledge, engaging in a limited reflection on what a future knowledge society would look like?

• Should knowledge be localised and transferable?

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Consider this

• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zDZFcDGpL4U

What kind of research we need to be engaging with to develop a model of education that will be responsive to the needs of future societies? kick start thinking about the ways in which your research is likely to tackle what Hannah Arendt said that education is perpetually ‘out of joint’ with the world].

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Research in Education

Diverse with a multi-disciplinary orientation to scholarship

• Complex as more and more people need to learn more things and commit to learning for longer than ever before

• Contested regarding the debates about what knowledge is (eg, instrumentality of learning) also shape the nature of educational research

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Why is educational research needed?

• Growing demand for evidence-based practice: demonstrate whether, how and under what circumstances learning initiatives work

• Effectiveness of ‘what works’ (how about contest and debates, willingness to accept uncertainty and embrace plurality)

• The link between current pedagogy and tomorrow’s citizens (too much emphasis on the past/ present not the future of education)

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Criticism of educational research

• ‘Crisis’ in educational research• Usefulness and relevance of research to policy and

practice• What counts as evidence?• Re-surface of polarisation of research • Real science is not about certainty but about uncertainty• Politicisation: research to ‘guide national policy, allowing

the government to take legitimate control over ever more specific areas of educational practice including pedagogy’ (Furlong, 2004: 353)

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Key points in the criticism

• The commissioning of educational research (eg, funding, transparency, political and ideological bias, being supply driven);

• Researchers’ abilities, practices and attitudes (eg, insufficient methodological training, limited engagement with research users);

• The organisation of the research (eg, publishing research, to lack of partnership and user involvement and limited dissemination);

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Key points in the criticism

• Methodology (eg, inconclusive, lack of rigour, using qualitative methods without any triangulation, sampling bias, ideological bias, superficial literature, flaws in empirical research);

• Research outcomes (eg, use of jargon and over-theoretical language, non-cumulative research findings, irrelevant to practical problems in the field, difficult to transfer in the school context .

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Group task

• Considering these key criticisms of educational research,

• In what ways they affect the conduct and dissemination of research in education?

• Have you experienced any of these issues raised in the criticism in your own profession (as a teacher or user of educational research)?

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Evidence based education

• The US National Research Council defined the quality of research along evidence-based, scientific research in an attempt to re-define scientific educational research along the lines of ‘causal analysis by means of experiment as the only way to improve educational research’ (Erickson and Gutierrez, 2002: 22).

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Resurfacing dichotomies

• Evidence-based movement, quantitative research methodologies are approached in a fundamentalist manner, allowing for dichotomies between qualitative and quantitative research to re-surface, offering a distorted view of science (eg, Berliner, 2002).

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Politicisation of research

• Other theorists in education agree that the current climate of intellectual crisis is heightened by the misuse of science and a sense of hypocrisy when it comes to policy decisions based on research findings (eg, Berliner, 2002; Whitty, 2006).

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The new orthodoxy

• The ‘new orthodoxy’ of educational research favours quantitative research approaches (Hodkinson, 2004) by arguing for an authoritative framework of knowledge that is value free and a-historical, and thus less relevant to the needs of a civic society.

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The validity of criticism

• A managerial discourse, focusing on • standards for good practice, development of

criteria to judge research and value for money (Tooley and Darby, 1998);

• relevance for practice and user involvement (Hargreaves, 1996);

• and evidence-based policy and practice, quality assurance and fitness for purpose (Hillage et al, 1998).

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Policy driven research?

• The focus on policy-relevant and policy-driven research as being the only valid form of research poses challenges for educational researchers (Freeman et al, 2007).

• To research education in an era of globalization and transition requires methodologies that are responsive to change and uncertainty.

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Politically driven research?

• The current danger in research in education, however, has not arisen from paradigmatic divisions but from the misuse and misinterpretation of science, and the acceptance of an ideology-driven research that dovetails with political concerns and agendas.

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What works?

• Educational research based on a narrowly defined notion of evidence of what works is problematic, especially in a field that changes rapidly with teaching and learning being influenced by multiple factors, and ‘what works today’ may not work tomorrow. Most important questions to ask are ‘why it works’, ‘in what contexts’ and, most importantly, ‘what it is’

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Educational research and political rhetoric

• Educational research is increasingly used by politicians and governments to support the rise of the ‘new managerialism’ by providing answers ‘that can guide national policy, allowing the government to take legitimate control over ever more specific areas of educational practice including pedagogy’

• Research as a tool for over –regulation and accountability

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The role of evidence

• Wright observes that ‘evidence-based everything’, has shifted our thinking about the relationship between academic research and real world policy and practice (2006). In this climate, research is not about scientific rigour, but about becoming a tool ‘to support government policies and strengthen management control’ (Lather, 2004: 763).

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Research as a quick fix?

• Need to differentiate between epistemological diversity (and the battles that characterise it or paradigm wars) and the use of research for political purposes to provide a ‘quick fix’ to complex social and educational problems.

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Communities of Practice

• Educational inquiry can benefit form a dialogue with diverse communities of practice and across paradigmatic divisions. Traditionally, educational research is situated within heterogeneous communities of practice, in terms of inter-disciplinary and cross-disciplinary areas of study.

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