The Theory Question in Research Capacity Building in Education: Towards an Agenda for Research and Practice

ABSTRACT

The question of capacity building in education has predominantly been approached with regard to the methods and methodologies of educational research. Far less attention has been given to capacity building in relation to theory. In many ways the latter is as pressing an issue as the former, given that good research depends on a combination of high quality techniques and high quality theorising. The ability to capitalise on capacity building in relation to methods and methodologies may therefore well be restricted by a lack of attention to theory. In this paper we make a case for capacity building with regard to theory, explore the different roles of theory in educational research, and provide an outline of an agenda for capacity building with regard to theory.

Keywords:

• educational research
• capacity building
• theory
• educational theory
• disciplines
• purposes of research
• purposes of theory

Notes

¹ TLRP – the Teaching and Learning Research Programme – was a large scale strategic co-ordinated research effort aimed at improving the quality of educational research in the UK (see www.tlrp.org).

² The ESRC – the Economic and Social Research Council – is the major funder of educational and social research in the UK.

³ The Research Assessment Exercise is a UK-wide evaluation of the quality of research outputs, environments and impact of all academic research in the UK. The exercise is conducted every seven or eight years. The RAE started in the 1990s and the next cycle – renamed Research Excellence Framework – is due to take place in 2013.

⁴ While Thomas (2007) provides a sustained critique of the role of theory in educational research and educational practice, he focuses almost exclusively on reasons why there should be ‘less theory’ (pp. 142–168) and makes very little effort to indicate where and how theory might actually be useful or even necessary. While the verdict on how much theory a field like education needs remains open, we do think that it is important to start such a discussion with an accurate understanding of the (potential) roles of theory – which is what we aim to provide in this paper.

⁵ It is therefore unrealistic to demand, as Thomas (2007, p. 24) does, that ‘”theory” as a word must be one thing or another [and] cannot – if it is to be used seriously to describe a particular kind of intellectual construction in education – have two or more meanings.’

⁶ It is important to note that we are not presenting Foucault here as one of the possible theories that can be used in educational research, but as articulating a particular approach to and understanding of (social and educational) research. The discussion of Foucault in this section is, to put it differently, one at the level of meta-theory or methodology, not at the level of object-theory.