The Labouring Sleepwalker: Evocation and expression as modes of qualitative educational research

This paper deals with the highly personal way an individual makes sense of the world in a way that avoids the pitfalls of the so‐called private language. For Wittgenstein following a rule can never mean just following another rule, though we do follow rules blindly. His idea of the ‘form of life’ elicits that ‘what we do’ refers to what we have learnt, to the way in which we have learnt it and to how we have grown to find it self‐evident. But the reference to the ‘bedrock’, to what was originally learnt, is the only kind of situation for which it makes sense to ask whether the meaning of a concept is correctly stated. Dialogue, conversation, and exchange of ideas are the right ways to characterize all the other situations. The challenge of Wittgensteinian philosophy is therefore that of a balance of the individual and the community, of language and the world. His insistence on the third person (or the intersubjective level) is countered by the importance he gives to each individual's personal stance: persons must speak for themselves and do what they can do. Given the growing interest for the kind of educational research where the ‘personal’ is focused on, I will try to take up the challenge to see how here as elsewhere ‘language’ works. By making clear what it does for us, it will gradually become clear how this kind of research may itself have to be reinterpreted.     

Philosophy,Art or Pedagogy? How should children experience education?

Abstract

There are various programmes currently advocated for ways in which children might encounter philosophy as an explicit part of their education. An analysis of these reveals the ways in which they are predicated on views of what constitutes philosophy. In the sense in which they are inquiry based, purport to encourage the pursuit of puzzlement and contribute towards creating democratic citizens, these programmes either implicitly rest on the work of John Dewey or explicitly use his work as the main warrant for their approach. This article explores what might count as educational in the practice of children ‘doing’ philosophy, by reconsidering Dewey’s notion of ‘experience’. The educational desire to generate inquiry, thought and democracy is not lost, but a view that philosophy takes its impetus from wonder is introduced to help re-evaluate what might count as educational experience in a Deweyan sense.     

Doing being Boys with ADHD: category memberships and differences in SEN classroom practices

This paper builds on sociological assumptions that teachers, schools and schooling may play an important role in the recognition and psychopathologization of particular boys as ‘difficult, disordered and disturbed’. The data draw on ethnographic work combined with video recordings of everyday classroom practices in a special educational needs unit with boys diagnosed with ADHD (Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder). Drawing on ethnomethodological work on members’ understanding of social categories (MCA) combined with the related methodology of ‘doing difference’, the focus is on the local social process through which boys’ unruly behaviors are made sense of and treated as the grounds for shifting categorization practices. It is found that both teachers and boys orient to the institutional categories Teacher and Student in teacher–student interactions for the ordering of the classroom . The boys’ conduct is in these instances far from pathological but is meaningful in the sense that it provides local resources to resist teacher authorithy and display agency. Overall, the analysis highlights the complexity of locally accomplished identity practices – in terms of how institutional-, gender- and age-appropriate conduct meshes with diagnostic criteria – in the social identification of boys diagnosed with ADHD.     

Reconciling ourselves to reality: Arendt,education and the challenge of being at home in the world

ABSTRACT

In this paper, I explore the educational significance of the work of Hannah Arendt through reflections on four papers that constitute this special issue. I focus on the challenge of reconciling ourselves to reality, that is, of being at home in the world. Although Arendt's idea of being at home in the world is connected to her explorations of understanding, such understanding should not be approached as a matter of sense making, but in terms of ‘eccentric judgement’. For judgement to be eccentric, we must expose ourselves to otherness, which has to do with friendship if we understand friendship as a public rather than an entirely private matter. While political judgement requires a ‘being in the presence of others’ Arendt's views on thinking and its role in moral judgement indicate the necessity of solitude, of being alone with oneself. Rather than seeing this a process through which one calls oneself into question, I highlight the importance of the experience of being called into question, which I understand as the experience of ‘being taught’. I conclude that the educational significance of Arendt's work particularly lies in this link with teaching, and less so in notions of learning, reflection and sense making.     

Machine behaviourism: future visions of ‘learnification’ and ‘datafication’ across humans and digital technologies

ABSTRACT

This paper examines visions of ‘learning’ across humans and machines in a near-future of intensive data analytics. Building upon the concept of ‘learnification’, practices of ‘learning’ in emerging big data-driven environments are discussed in two significant ways: the training of machines, and the nudging of human decisions through digital choice architectures. Firstly, ‘machine learning’ is discussed as an important example of how data-driven technologies are beginning to influence educational activity, both through sophisticated technical expertise and a grounding in behavioural psychology. Secondly, we explore how educational software design informed by behavioural economics is increasingly intended to frame learner choices to influence and ‘nudge’ decisions towards optimal outcomes. Through the growing influence of ‘data science’ on education, behaviourist psychology is increasingly and powerfully invested in future educational practices. Finally, it is argued that future education may tend toward very specific forms of behavioural governance – a ‘machine behaviourism’ – entailing combinations of radical behaviourist theories and machine learning systems, that appear to work against notions of student autonomy and participation, seeking to intervene in educational conduct and shaping learner behaviour towards predefined aims.     

Philosophy and Method in Educational Research

The purpose of this paper is to explore how the idea of method now shapes the self‐understanding in terms of which many educational researchers make sense of their work. It does so by comparing the modem ‘methodical’ approach to educational research with the premodern style of philosophical theorising it has largely replaced. On the basis of this comparison it shows how some important questions about the future of educational research begin to emerge.     

Feedback as a relational concept in the classroom

Abstract

This paper constructs a theoretical argument to frame feedback as a relational concept. It addresses contemporary concern that formative assessment, of which feedback is a part, is under theorised. The arguments presented link to existing theoretical and research evidence. The paper also challenges the dominant policy discourse in high stakes assessment contexts in which feedback is typically seen in technised ways to serve the need to raise measured pupil outcomes. Vygotsky’s notion of the zone of proximal development is explored as a relational space in which both teachers and learners understand differences between learning ‘now’ and learning ‘next’. Extending Vygotsky’s perspective, a socio-cultural perspective is offered, by considering the role of ‘others’, ‘language’, ‘activity’ and ‘identity’, as part of the process of sharing and understanding feedback in classrooms. The work of Holland et al. (1998), Bakhtin (1986) are central to the developing argument. The paper reveals feedback as a complex situated process, requiring mediated dynamic interaction, where feedback is appropriated as a cultural artefact by its participants. The implications of such an articulation demands a greater sense of understanding pupils’ roles in feedback and the importance of teachers enabling pupils to see themselves in new ways as future learners.     

The corporate curriculum: Schools as sites of new knowledge production

This paper investigates the ways in which corporate ideas are impacting on Australian education, with a particular emphasis on secondary schools. We note the growing importance of a culture of enterprise in changing the practices of schooling, indicating how a performative organisational culture is producing different identities and relationships in educational work. The paper begins by considering the imperative for schools and individuals to be enterprising. It then moves on to examine more closely the impact of this discursive shift on teachers, students and school communities as they engage in enterprising practices. We draw on our research of over 50 state and private schools mainly in south-east Queensland to demonstrate how the newly emergent corporate ‘curriculum’ is producing a changing set of imperatives, responsibilities and outcomes for leadership in ‘enterprising’ schools.     

Standards-based accountability: reification,responsibility and the ethical subject

Over the last two decades, teachers in Australia have witnessed multiple incarnations of the idea of ‘educational accountability’ and its enactment. Research into this phenomenon of educational policy and practice has revealed various layers of the concept, particularly its professional, bureaucratic, political and cultural dimensions that are central to the restructuring of educational governance and the reorganization of teachers’ work. Today, accountability constitutes a core concept of neoliberal policy-making in education, both fashioning and normalizing what counts as teacher professionalism in the ‘audit society.’ This article focuses specifically on the recent introduction by the Australian Federal Government of standardised literacy testing in all states across Australia, and raises questions about the impact of this reform on the work practices of English literacy teachers in primary and secondary schools. We draw on data collected as part of a major research project funded by the Australian Research Council, involving interviews with teachers about their experiences of implementing standardised testing. The article traces the ways in which teachers’ work is increasingly being mediated by standardised literacy testing to show how these teachers grapple with the tensions between state-wide mandates and a sense of their professional responsibility for their students.     

Young black males: resilience and the use of capital to transform school ‘failure’

This article addresses the idea of ‘failure’ of young black males with respect to schooling. Perceptions of black masculinity are often linked to ‘underperformance’ in the context of school academic achievement. This article addresses how young black men, by great personal effort, recover from school ‘failure’. It explores how young black men, despite negative school experiences, see possibilities for their future and how they seek to transform school ‘failure’ into personal and educational ‘success’. Low attainment combined with permanent/temporary exclusion from school does not necessarily deter young black men from pursuing their education. This low attainment is used by some to make a renewed attempt at educational progression in a different post-school learning environment. Yosso’s concept of ‘community cultural wealth’ provides an understanding of how different forms of capital are accessed by young black men to form a ‘turnaround narrative’. This article considers the complex ways in which young black males work to transform their negative school experience. Their narratives reveal a determination to succeed and the ways in which cultivation of this determination by the family, organisational/community agents promotes a sense of possibility. However, it remains to be seen how, in the UK, the cuts to vital local services and support will impact on this sense of possibility.     

Lifting a corner of the research rug: a case for meta-interviews in qualitative studies

The degree to which knowledge can be abstracted from the situations in which it is constructed has received criticism in recent years. There is growing awareness of the importance of the interrelationship between the content of what is said and the context in which it is said. Some researchers contend that if we ignore the situated nature of cognition, we defeat our own goal of providing robust, useful knowledge. What are the implications of such a claim for the practice of educational research? More specifically, what are the implications for the conduct of interview-based studies in which researchers derive knowledge claims from participants’ responses? In this paper, we describe and illustrate the use of “meta-interviews”, a research strategy for enhancing the credibility of the claims made from analyses of interview data. This approach brings to light key contextual issues that are sometimes ‘swept under the rug’ when reporting research results.     

Five literatures of organisation: putting the context back into educational leadership

In this article we develop the arguments of Glatter on the importance of adopting a more ‘organisation-oriented’ approach to educational leadership development. Through a critical review of current publications and national courses in the field, we argue that educational leadership is still very skills focussed at the expense of more sophisticated understandings of organisational context. This skills focus, or ‘agency without structure’, as Glatter puts it, encourages a ‘can do’ culture of simplistic solution-seeking rather than appreciation of complexity and paradox in the leadership experience which can produce better judgements. To identify such ‘understandings’, we then examine five traditions of thinking about ‘organisation’ through their related literatures. The first four, thinking psychologically, thinking structurally, thinking culturally and thinking politically, build on organisational ‘frames’. The fifth literature explores how these frames are constantly and variously brought into play through ‘complex responsive processes’ of organising in our daily work lives. Implications of this more organisation-focussed approach for educational leadership development are discussed through examples from the authors’ own research and teaching.     

What (a) to do about ‘impact’: a Bourdieusian critique

This paper presents a research‐based, theoretically‐informed contribution to the debate on ‘impact’ in educational research, and specifically a response to Gardner's 2011 presidential address to the British Educational Research Association. It begins by discussing the development of the research ‘impact’ agenda as a global phenomenon, and reviews the current state of debate about ‘impact’ in the UK's Research Excellence Framework. It goes on to argue that a radical alternative perspective on this agenda is needed, and outlines Bourdieu's sociology—including his much‐neglected concept of illusio—as offering potential for generating critical insights into demands for ‘impact’. The term illusio in particular calls us to examine the ‘stakes’ that matter in the field of educational research: the objects of value that elicit commitment from players and are ‘worth the candle’. This framework is then applied first to analyse an account of how an ESRC‐funded project that I led was received by different research ‘users’ as we sought to generate impact for our findings. Second, it is used to show that the field of educational research has changed; that it has bifurcated between the field of research production and that of research reception; and that the former is being subordinated to the latter. The paper concludes by arguing that, despite many educational researchers' commitments to ‘make a difference’ in wider society, the research ‘impact’ imperative is one that encroaches on academic freedom; and that academics need to find collective ways in which to resist it.     

The personal and professional selves of teachers: stable and unstable identities

In much educational literature it is recognised that the broader social conditions in which teachers live and work, and the personal and professional elements of teachers' lives, experiences, beliefs and practices are integral to one another, and that there are often tensions between these which impact to a greater or lesser extent upon teachers' sense of self or identity. If identity is a key influencing factor on teachers' sense of purpose, self‐efficacy, motivation, commitment, job satisfaction and effectiveness, then investigation of those factors which influence positively and negatively, the contexts in which these occur and the consequences for practice, is essential. Surprisingly, although notions of ‘self’ and personal identity are much used in educational research and theory, critical engagement with individual teachers' cognitive and emotional ‘selves’ has been relatively rare. Yet such engagement is important to all with an interest in raising and sustaining standards of teaching, particularly in centralist reform contexts which threaten to destabilise long‐held beliefs and practices. This article addresses the issue of teacher identities by drawing together research which examines the nature of the relationships between social structures and individual agency; between notions of a socially constructed, and therefore contingent and ever‐remade, ‘self’, and a ‘self’ with dispositions, attitudes and behavioural responses which are durable and relatively stable; and between cognitive and emotional identities. Drawing upon existing research literature and findings from a four‐year Department for Education and Skills funded project with 300 teachers in 100 schools which investigated variations in teachers' work and lives and their effects on pupils (VITAE), it finds that identities are neither intrinsically stable nor intrinsically fragmented, as earlier literature suggests. Rather, teacher identities may be more, or less, stable and more or less fragmented at different times and in different ways according to a number of life, career and situational factors.     

‘It’s not right for boys to play with dolls’: young children constructing and policing gender during ‘free play’ in a South African classroom

This paper focuses on the ways in which five- to seven-year-old primary school children in a Black/African township in South Africa construct and experience ‘free play’ in the classroom. Findings highlight the gendered manner in which play is constructed and constantly policed by these young children during ‘free play’. By foregrounding the young children’s gendered constructions and experiences of ‘free play’, the paper challenges the common sense teacher perceptions and constructions of children’s play that suggest children have ‘free choice’. The paper reveals that play is far from a ‘free’ activity as it is heavily constrained by specific contextual gender norms and expectations which limit possibilities by reproducing polarised versions of gender and perpetuate gender inequalities. Implications focus on the ways in which teachers can work with children to challenge the boundaries of gender during ‘free play’.     

The Professional Status of Educational Research: Professionalism and Developmentalism in Twenty-First-Century Working Life

‘How helpful and how necessary is it for at least some of us to see ourselves as professional educational researchers?’ asked Donald McIntyre in his 1996 presidential address to the British Educational Research Association. Still pertinent to consideration of the direction in which the British educational research community ought to focus its development, this question is revisited through examination of whether or not educational research is a profession. Located within a sociological framework, the paper first examines some of the earliest work that established the sociology of professions as a field of study. It then compares this with recent work in the field, before considering whether or not – against the various criteria for professional status that these studies identify – educational research(ing) may be categorised as a profession. Using Noordegraaf’s three categories, the case is examined for considering educational research(ing) as a ‘pure’, a ‘hybrid’ or a ‘situated’ profession. The conclusion is that it represents none of these, but that, within the context of twenty-first-century working life, this is less important than the need for educational research to embrace a culture of developmentalism.     

Towards Advocacy: post‐positivist directions for progressive teacher educators

This paper seeks to draw attention to the extent to which liberatory pedagogical intentions can function as part of a technology of surveillance unless, as socially critical educators, we actively work against our own tendency to totalising educational discourse. It notes a number of folkloric traditions in pre‐service teacher education that derive from discursive practices which position students either as inevitably acting out a well‐documented scenario or as ‘victims’ of the dominant technocratic model of teacher education. This paper suggests a way forward for teacher educators through the application of post‐positivist theorising to what has come to be understood as ‘proven’ by past and current educational research. This process is exemplified in the discussion by the application of post‐structuralist deconstructive techniques to avant garde educational text in order to bring forward for scrutiny the binary oppositions in our own ‘transformative’ educational discourse. The implications of ‘advocacy’ research are discussed and a plea made for pedagogy that intervenes in socially critical practices by making problematic our own ‘versions’ of student teacher needs.     

Winners and Losers' in the Development of Home-School Literacy Partnerships: An Analysis of Discourses of Power

In the past decade, family literacy has been the focus of considerable research. This work has suggested multiple understandings of involvement, and that many schools tend to work within a definition of parent involvement that does little more than seek to conform parents and their children to the literacy practices of schools. This paper reports research that has considered how parents take strategic action on their own and their children's behalf to increase their educational opportunities. It looks closely at the ways relationships between families and schools are constructed, and presents two ‘telling cases’ of families' responses to school literacy practices assigned for work at home. In doing so, it attempts to bring voices from Australia to the dialogue on ways of viewing parental involvement. It does this from a community centred perspective with the focus on the process of constructing shared meanings and understandings. The research examines the specific literacy practices that are honoured and dishonoured in the name of ‘parent involvement’. In doing so, the paper attempts to make visible the potential ‘winners’ and ‘losers’ in the development of home-school literacy partnerships.