Mapping practitioner perceptions of ‘It’s research based’: scientific discourse, speech acts and the use and abuse of research

Abstract

Our goal is to deconstruct the text formed by practitioners’ narratives about the use of the claim ‘It’s research based’ to understand both how this claim is used and received by practitioners and how it may impact on teachers’ attitudes. We map a range of differences in these narratives about what is ‘real’ (research versus practice), patterns (‘rhetorical turns’) in how the claim is received and how the claim is valued. We question the power position of scientific discourse, explore the use of speech acts to either wield power or resist it and speculate about the results in terms of the use and abuse of research itself. We find that practitioners vary according to whether they: (a) adopt a scientized response reflecting uncritical acceptance of the claim; (b) maintain an attitude of sceptical and critical reflection, but tentatively adopt research based on the claim; (c) resist and even defy the claim, reflecting a hypercritical response that ignores research altogether and insists on their own practice as the locus of the ‘real’.

Notes

1. Barthes (1989) noted that ‘discourse is not only a sum of sentences, it is, itself, one great sentence’ (p. 13). We therefore take the responses collectively to form a whole (text), but caution our reader that this is not a reified, unified, consensual whole, but an assemblage of responses that vary greatly in their claims and perceptions.

2. Issues of use are particularly enlightening as a backdrop for our inquiry into rhetorical tendencies and perceptual responses, but we focus here on interpreting the meaning(s) of the text formed by responses.

3. Barthes noted that in the student revolt against the university in May 1968 in France, where national shock was a factor, students engaged in a liberating form of speech‐act, ‘wild speech’, in their attempt to either resist or overturn power. Our concern here, of course, is with those who use the rhetorical shortcut in a different setting and for the purpose of either wielding power or resisting power.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Jovictoria Nicholson–Goodman

JoVictoria Nicholson‐Goodman is Assistant Professor of Educational Foundations in the School of Behavioral Sciences and Education, Penn State University, Middletown, PA 17057, USA. Email: [email protected]. Her specializations include social foundations, curriculum studies and education policy and leadership. Her most recent publications are Going to Scale with High‐quality Early Education: Choices and Consequences in Universal Pre‐kindergarten Efforts (Christina and Nicholson‐Goodman, 2006; RAND) and ‘Confronting authority and self: social cartography and curriculum theorizing for uncertain times’, in Garman and Piantanida (eds) Authority to Imagine: The Struggle Toward Representation in Dissertation Writing (2006; Peter Lang).

Noreen B. Garman

Noreen Garman is Professor of Education in the Administrative and Policy Studies Department, University of Pittsburgh, PA 15260, USA, Email: [email protected]. She coordinates the programme in social and comparative analysis in education. Her specializations include curriculum studies, instructional supervision and qualitative/interpretive research. She is a Fulbright Scholar who has published numerous articles in professional journals and situates her research mode in interpretive forms of inquiry. With Maria Piantanida she is co‐author of The Qualitative Dissertation: A Guide for Students and Faculty (1999, Corwin) and The Authority to Imagine: The Struggle Toward Representation in Dissertation Writing (2006, Peter Lang).