Defining educational research: A perspective of/on presidential addresses and the australian association for research in education |
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| Authors: | Bob Lingard Trevor Gale |
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| Institution: | 1. The University of Queensland, Australia
2. University of South Australia, Australia
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| Abstract: | This paper is concerned with the definition of the field of educational research and the changing and developing role of the
Australian Association for Research in Education (AARE) in representing and constituting this field. The evidence for the
argument is derived from AARE Presidential Addresses across its 40-year history. The paper documents the enhanced complexity
and diversity of the field over these 40 years, including the emergence of a global educational policy field, theoretical
and methodological developments in the social sciences and new research accountabilities such as the Excellence in Research
for Australia (ERA) measure. Specifically, the paper suggests that the evidence-based movement in public management and education
policy, and the introduction of the ERA, potentially limit and redefine the field of educational research, reducing the usefulness
and relevance of educational research to policy makers and practitioners. This arises from a failure to recognise thatEducation is both a field of research and a field of policy and practice. Located against both developments, the paper argues for a
principled eclecticism framed by a reassessment of quality, which can be applied to the huge variety of methodologies, theories,
epistemologies and topics legitimately utilised and addressed within the field of educational research. At the same time,
the paper argues the need to globalise the educational research imagination and deparochialise educational research. This
call is located within a broader argument suggesting the need for a new social imaginary (in a post-neoliberal context of
the global financial crisis) to frame educational policy and practice and the contribution that educational theory and research
might make to its constitution. In relation to this, the paper considers the difficulties that political representations of
such a new imaginary might entail for the President and the Association, given the variety of its membership and huge diversity
of its research interests. |
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