How often are theories developed through empirical research into higher education?

Abstract

This article reports on a review of empirical research published in selected higher education journals in 2008, which was focused on examining how often theories are developed through research. This review found relatively little evidence of theory development. Drawing on the notions of internal and external languages of description, it is argued that this is partly due to the lack of explicit conceptualisation of the object of research in the writing-up of higher education research, and the lack of a discursive gap between the ways in which research objects are conceptualised and the ways in which data are analysed in accounts of empirical research into higher education. In conclusion, four ways of promoting such a discursive gap in the reporting of research are discussed.

Keywords:

• theory
• methodology
• languages of description
• higher education research
• data analysis

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank Andrea Abbas, Monica McLean, Murray Saunders and Paul Trowler for very helpful discussions around the ideas in this paper, and Martyn Hammersley, Carolyn Jackson and the anonymous referees, for their very helpful comments on earlier drafts of this paper.