Researching politics and the politics of research: recent qualitative studies in the UK

Abstract

In this review of recent qualitative studies in the UK, we highlight tensions involved in the contemporary setting. The insertion of a market ideology into educational matters has resulted in specific policy outcomes with damaging consequences for the welfare state. Paradoxically, there is still funding available to investigate these policies. Policy work has become the dominant (funded) paradigm within the qualitative research setting, but it is inevitably interpellated with the discourses of social justice. Although there is less public financial support for research that has a direct and unambiguous focus on issues of social justice, and still less with the subjectivities and different voices of minorities, this work continues.