Thinking resources for educational research methods and methodology

Abstract

This paper considers the idea of a crisis in educational research. Some conventional expressions of that ‘crisis’ are examined in terms of their assumptions about what is ‘proper’ to educational research. The paper then affirms the role of ‘metaphysics’ in educational research as a necessary dimension of method, as opposed to the naïve assertion of the primacy of ‘craft’ or of the simple rights of ‘practice’. What has been referred to, contentiously, as ‘continental philosophy’ is considered as providing occasions and resources for the heterogeneous renewal of research thinking in education – and therefore of research method. The specific positions of the papers gathered here are considered in their various engagements with issues of educational research method. This diverse range of ideas and possibilities is then set against the now familiar expressions of loss of homogeneity, crisis of coherence, value and purpose. An alternative perspective on the idea of a ‘research community’, drawing on some further examples from contemporary ‘continental’ philosophy, is proposed in answer to these laments.

Keywords:

• crisis
• metaphysics
• continental philosophy
• decentred educational research
• community
• hospitality

Notes

1. See David West, An Introduction to Continental Philosophy (Cambridge: Polity, 1996). West’s account refuses to identify continental philosophy as a geographical category and seeks instead follow historical trends in responses to Kant and enlightenment thinking.