This is the third page of a selective summary of Part 1of the above text, entitled 'The Context of Educational Research'. Different research traditions are described.
1. The nature of enquiry (contd.)
Critical theory and critical educational research
Critical theory eschews the intention to only understand the world. Instead it seeks to change it.
It is attentive to the interests at work in social activities (including research itself) and promotes freedom by trying to redress inequality and empower oppressed groups. It declares that researchers cannot claim neutrality in their work. It attempts to uncover where power lies and to overcome repression.
Importatant methodologies of the critical approach include ideology critique and action research. Ideology critique exposes vested interests, revealing how a given situation maintains rationally indefensible inequalities. Unsurprisingly action research, undertaken by participants in the context being studied, entails action; changes in practice explicitly taken to redress the criticised situation.
Criticisms of approaches from critical theory
The sharpest criticism of the critical approach is that it is not the job of a scientist to intervene: critical theory has a political agenda that is misplaced. And in practice the emancipatory claims of action research are unsubstantiated: real power lies beyond the grasp of the ordinary practitioner.
Critical theory and curriculum research
Most critical researches are highly particular. An area where critical theory has had wider influence is that of curriculum design.
Feminist research
A specific stance stemming from ideology critique is feminist research, within which women's consciousness of oppression, exploitation and disempowerment becomes a focus. Principles for feminist research are listed, as are methodologies that derive from these.
Research and evaluation
Researchers should be attentive to the politics of their own work. Much recent research, it is suggested, has been to evaluate given policies which, whilst necessary in itself, has arguably handed the research agenda to those outside the research community.
Evaluation and research may be very similar. Both activities utilise the same skills and methods. However, there are differences, practical and conceptual, amongst which are:
- Evaluation is more parochial than universal
- Research is undertaken to satisfy curiosity, evaluation contributes to solving a problem
- Researchers are answerable to the research community, evaluators to the 'client'
- Research seeks conclusions, evaluations lead to decisions
- An evaluator's agenda is a given one.
In practice the differences are often blurred, not least because of politics and funding. This may harm the quality of the evaluation of specific projects in several ways, e.g.:
- Uncritical acceptance of project goals and implicit advocacy of the project
- Short-termism
- 'Over-reporting' of change because of undue reliance on the perceptions of principal project participants (e.g. managers) and 'under-reporting' of critical voices (e.g. teachers, pupils)
- An atheoretical approach
- Self-censorship and/or lack of public reporting.
Research proper should be problem-setting rather than mere problem-solving.
Research, politics and policy-making
The complex, essentially political relationships between research and policy-making are discussed with several lessons for would-be researchers briefly highlighted.
Methods and methodology
'(W)hen we use the term educational research, we... have in mind the systematic and scholarly application of the principles of a science of behaviour (...normative and interpretive)... to the problems of teaching and learning within the formal educational framework and to the clarification of issues having direct or indirect bearing on these concepts.'
Cohen, L., Manion, L. & Morrison, K. (2000), Research Methods in Education 5th Edition, London, RoutledgeFalmer
