Addressing the Delusion of Relevance: struggles in connecting educational research and social justice

ABSTRACT

The relationship between educational research and educational practices is at best tenuous. The majority of educational research projects do not make any qualitative differences to educational practices. Rather than empowering teachers to reflect and change, educational research, in the main, serves other interests and other ends. As pertinently summarised by Maruyama: “Mainstream researchers live palxonisingly in a delusion of relevance”. It is the contention of this paper that the questionable relevances and insignificant effects of much qualitative educational research are founded in: (1) researcher goals that do not recognise the inherent limitations/potentials in various qualitative methodologies; (2) researcher roles which aspire to an unachievable detachment and impartiality; and (3) researcher designs that embalm established practices rather than interrupt, challenge and change them in the name of equity and justice. This paper develops these themes in three parts: the first examining the interconnections between research, relevance and social justice; the second portraying the ‘slips’ and ‘shifts’ in the struggle for relevance and justice in a case‐study research project; and the third detailing a consequence of the shifts ‐the renegotiation of the study into an action research project.