The starting-point of critical elaboration is the consciousness of what one really is, and is ‘knowing thyself as a product of the historical process to date, which has deposited in you an infinity of traces without leaving an inventory. (Gramsci 1971, p. 324) For the social or educational scientist, social and educational realities are doubly pre-shaped, by fellow researchers and more fundamentally by the policy makers and practitioners whose activities constitute the realities being studied. It follows that although the production of new knowledge in both the natural and social sciences involves a dialogue amongst researchers about a reality external to them, the production of new knowledge in the social and educational sciences cannot avoid also being a dialogue with those involved in educational policy and practice and who may or may not be influenced by educational research. (Young 1998, p. 168)
Abstract
This paper is a reflection on the current policy moment in educational research in Australia in the context of globalisation. Set against a consideration of the emergent structure of feeling, the paper draws on three case studies of research to draw out some lessons for educational researchers and the research community. The argument is put that the dangerous ‘we’ of AARE needs to support increased funding for education and for educational research and, for the latter, to support a range of funding sources, types of research, methodologies and dissemination approaches. Increasingly there are pressures upon such eclecticism because of governmental attempts to ‘instrumentalise’ relationships between educational research and practitioner needs as perceived by governments. While such research is necessary, there is also a need within a democratic polity for research framed by agendas set by researchers that critiques government-directed developments. The paper argues there is a complex relationship amongst researchers and educational policy and pedagogical practitioners and as such the concept of ‘impact’ as applied to educational research requires substantial theorising. Contemporary research policy has tended to inhibit the dissemination of academic research to educational practitioners, while educational policy has tended, inappropriately in the argument of the paper, to construct teachers as the mere recipients of policy and research done elsewhere.
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This paper began life as my 2000 AARE Presidential Address delivered at the Annual Conference at Sydney University in November. It has taken some time to mature to its written form and thus some subsequent references have been utilized. By and large, however, the argument is that presented as my 2000 Presidential Address. Consequently, the paper has many of the trappings of that particular genre. Ian Hextall, Carolynn Lingard, Nicholas Lingard, Martin Mills and Shaun Rawolle commented on earlier versions of this paper and helped to improve its structure, its argument and its expression. Discussions with Jill Blackmore and Peter Renshaw about capacity for educational research in contemporary Australia have contributed in constructive ways to my thinking about educational research. The flaws in the argument are, of course, all mine.
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Lingard, B. Some lessons for educational researchers: Repositioning research in education and education in research. Aust. Educ. Res. 28, 1–46 (2001). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF03219759
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF03219759