« Speaking Truth to Power »? On the Challenges of Collaborative Research through European Funding

Author(s):

Eric Mangez (presenting / submitting) Pieter Vanden Broeck (presenting)

Conference:

ECER 2014

Network:

28. Sociologies of Education

Format:

Paper

Session Information

28 SES 05 A, Knowledge Production Among Institutions, Actors and Communities in Education Policy

Paper Session

Time:

2014-09-03

11:00-12:30

Room:

B116 Sala de Aulas

Chair:

Romuald Normand

Contribution

The submission puts forward a sociological investigation (with a Luhmannian orientation) of the relationship between knowledge and policy in Europe. It does so by exploring large EU funded research projects in social science and their role in policy-making. The development of large EU research projects that gather diverse academics and researchers over a significant period of time is a relatively new phenomenon. Precisely what is new is not the fact of collaboration as such: it is rather the fact that collaboration is increasingly being incentivized (funded) and governed (controlled), through policy programs, funding agencies and so on (Papatsiba 2013). This evolution has resulted in a double outcome. Whilst the governing of research becomes apparent through the emergence of stringent policy-related expectations attached to such projects, the financial incentives have triggered the rise of new forms of organizations: large, international, temporary organisations.

In the literature, one finds several attempts to find out whether such collaborative research is more or less productive than solo research. Mauthner and Doucet argue that the social science community has been rather “unreflexive and uncritical in its adoption of team-based research models and practices”. According to them there is “an unspoken assumption that team research is ‘better’ than solo research” (Mauthner & Doucet 2008: 972). Our argument in this submission is that the question one should ask, is not whether such or such form of research organization is more or less productive, better or worse than another. One should rather wonder how a given form of research organization works and responds to its external conditions of possibility. That is, how scientific research handles the expectations raised by its political environment through policy-makers and the like. We are thus particularly interested in the inside and the outside of large EU funded research projects, which implies understanding the interaction between their internal functioning and the external (policy) demands they are supposed to respond to.

Collaborative research is one of the several forms in which the contemporary relationship between science and policy becomes apparent. As all other forms (think tanks, government-led study centres, advisory boards, ad hoc expertise, etc.), it rests however on the same, more general expectation that the best criteria for sound political decision-making are best distilled from scientific knowledge. This expectation conforms strongly to the self-descriptions of the political world, but often much less so to the sociological reality of its decision-making process. In this submission we look both (1) at EU funded collaborative research and (2) at how policy-making deals with the knowledge-intensive environment that it helps create.

Method

We attempt investigating the knowledge - policy relationship by exploring large international research projects in social science and their role in policy-making. What sort of phenomena are they? What are the mechanisms and issues involved? What does policy-making expect from such projects? How do they respond to expectations? These questions were explored in and through a EU-funded international research project. The KNOW&POL project plays a double role in this contribution. We use it as a case study – i.e. we turn it into an object of analysis - for understanding how large research projects work, and at the same time we present some of its observations, as the project was precisely interested in analysing the interrelationship between knowledge and policy. Through a strange loop (the notion is from Douglas Hofstadter), in the KNOWandPOL project, the research process became (one of) the very object(s) of the research project. In order to explore these questions, we make use of the epistemological backbone of Niklas Luhmann’s theory of systems. More precisely, we rely on his appropriation of what is generally known as second order cybernetics. This theoretical orientation stretches back to Heinz von Foerster’s (1981) distinction between first and second order observations and tries to formulate a theory of the observation of observations. Within this logic, as we will briefly explain, observing becomes synonym with the indicative use of two-sided distinctions. Still in line with Spencer Brown’s calculus of forms, Luhmann simultaneously adds an operational character to the act of observation by combining the very notion of observation with his general theory of social systems. At least since Luhmann's autopoietic turn, system formation coincides with operations and operations imply observations. In that sense, it is useful to remark that we are certainly dealing with a constructivist theory. But one that refuses a naive radical constructivism in favour of a more self-conscious operative constructivism that not only distinguishes between object and observers, but opens up the complexity of their relationship, by adding both the observation and the observation of observations to the equation (cf. Esposito, 1996). Some of our conclusions are briefly presented below. They are drawn from two perspectives: that of the researchers involved in large projects and that of the political system which is supposed to make knowledge-based policy.

Expected Outcomes

(1) Having a large number of people investigating the same research problem may appear at first as a numeric advantage: there are means in such large enterprises than in solo research projects. This view however fails to account for the fact that collaborative research projects must handle an additional problem: that of collaboration itself. This problem is both social and epistemological. The social issue comes from the fact that an international project inevitably functions as a social field where individuals struggle for their intellectual existence and recognition (Hilgers & Mangez 2014). The plurality of observers involved in a consortium also raises an epistemological difficulty. The latter can be avoided if observers make first order observations only. Paraphrasing Luhmann, researchers can then work under the illusion of having direct contact with reality “at least as long as they only observe what they observe and do not observe how they observe” (Luhmann 2012: 50). This type of functioning is likely to weaken reflexivity and facilitate collaboration for it keeps those collaborating from questioning their own and each other’s ways of constructing reality. (2) Looking at the problem from the point of view of the political system, other issues must be raised. The project of a knowledge-intensive Europe has increased the complexity of the political environment. We know from systems theory that the more knowledge is produced in the environment of policy-makers, the more irritation risks increasing for the governing system. The view according to which more knowledge will mechanically lead to better decision-making must therefore be opposed. More knowledge means more doubts, more possibilities, and more questions. While doubts can be handled in the scientific system (one could even say that doubts are necessary for the system science to continue its autopoesis), they risk creating (environmental) irritations (frustrations) for the political system.

References

Selective bibliography (not cited in the submission due to lack of space) Biesta G. (2007), Why ‘‘What Works’’ Won’t Work: Evidence-Based Practice and the Democratic Deficit in Educational Research, Educational Theory, 57 (1), 1-22. Boffey, P. M. (1975). The brain bank of America : an inquiry into the politics of science. New York: McGraw-Hill. Carvalho L.M. (2011) Look at the mirror! On the cognitive and normative features of a knowledge-policy tool, in J. Kush (ed.) Knowledge, Differences, and Harmonies in the Time of Globalization, Cambridge: Cambridge Scholars Publishing. Esposito, E. (1996). Observing objects and programming objects. Systems Research and Behavioral Science, 13(3), pp. 251–260. Grek, S. (2009) Governing by numbers: the PISA effect, Journal of Education Policy, 24(1): 23-37. Hilgers M. and Mangez E. (2014) Introduction to Pierre Bourdieu’s Theory of Fields in Higers M. and E Mangez, Bourdieu's Theory of Social Fields: Concepts and Applications, Routledge Advances in Sociology. Katz, J. S., & Martin, B. R. (1997). What is research collaboration?. Research policy, 26(1), 1-18. Luhmann, N. (1990). Political theory in the welfare state. Berlin: de Gruyter. Luhmann, N. (2012). Theory of society: Volume 1. Stanford, California: Stanford University Press. Luhmann, N. (2013). Theory of society: Volume 2. Stanford, California: Stanford University Press. Mangez, E. and Hilgers, M. (2012) The field of knowledge and the policy field in education: PISA and the production of knowledge for policy, European Educational Research Journal, 11 (2): 189-205. Mauthner, N. S., & Doucet, A. (2008). Knowledge Once Divided Can Be Hard to Put Together Again'. An Epistemological Critique of Collaborative and Team-Based Research Practices. Sociology, 42(5), 971-985. Neumann E., Kiss A., Fejes I. (2012) The Hard Work of Interpretation: the national politics of PISA reception in Hungary and Romania, European Educational Research Journal, 11(2), 227-242. Ozga J. (2013) Acts of construction. The conditions of collaboration. A response to Vassilika Papatsiba. Policy Futures in education, 11 (4), 453-455. Papatsiba V. (2013) The Idea of Collaboration in the Academy: its epistemic and social potentials and risks for knowledge generation, Policy Futures in Education, 11(4), 436-448. Solesbury W. (2001). “Evidence-based policy: whence it came and where it’s going” ESRC, Centre for Evidence-based Policy and Practice (Working Paper 1). Available via: http//www.evidencenetwork.org.uk Wasser, J. D., & Bresler, L. (1996). Working in the interpretive zone: Conceptualizing collaboration in qualitative research teams. Educational researcher, 25(5), 5-15.

Author Information

Eric Mangez (presenting / submitting)

Université Catholique de Louvain

CIRTES

Bruxelles

Pieter Vanden Broeck (presenting)

Catholic University of Leuven

Sociology

Brussels

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