Working Together for Educative Community through Research

Abstract

The paper explores the threat of Balkanisation. Whereas in the USA the debate has focused on competing research paradigms, in the UK it is seen to result from threats to the status quo posed by the media's portrayal of government hostility to education. This has led to the creation of folk devils whose ideas spread moral panic amongst the research community. The paper identifies three such folk devils and argues that the moral panic comes from a research community that has not learned to constrain its disagreements. The paper argues a case for an educative community based on constrained disagreement that is contained by its shared desire for ethical, creative and emancipatory solutions to educational problems. An example of a small, local research community is used to outline the ‘promises and perils’ of such a solution.

*Presidential Address to the British Educational Research Association given at the Annual Conference, Queen's University, Belfast, August 1998.

Notes

*Presidential Address to the British Educational Research Association given at the Annual Conference, Queen's University, Belfast, August 1998.