New Inequalities and Transparency in Transnational spaces: Education in and through Shifting Environment

Author(s):

Gyöngyvér Pataki(presenting / submitting)

Conference:

ECER 2016

Network:

28. Sociologies of Education

Format:

Paper

Session Information

28 SES 06, Knowledge Production and the Europeanization of Education

Paper Session

Time:

2016-08-24

15:30-17:00

Room:

NM-B101

Chair:

Camilla Addey

Contribution

This paper seeks to contribute to the current debate on the transformation of the educational research spaces in the view of global transitions and challenges (Hannerz 1996; Urry 2007). It has become evident that the art of educational research governance is enriched by novel forms as global transitions disturb the perspectives, vocabulary and application of nationally framed policy discourses (Ball,2009; Lawn, 2007; Nóvoa, 2013; Pels, 2005). This indicates a need for more precise analysis of extra-discursive factors, which direct attention to the multilevel context in which discourses are located. Context and contextualization appear to be central to investigate problems to be solved or constructed and logics imposed (Bacchi, 2000; Ball, 1993). Within this framework this paper intends to address European Research Associations as a system of ‘evolving network of research spaces ’ (Sheddon 2014).

Method

To analyze the role of context and contextualization in transnational spaces as novel forms of research governance, four group interviews and 26 semi-structured interviews were carried out among scholars engaged in the European Educational Research Association in 2013 (Wodak and Meyer, 2009). Respondents were asked to share their experiences with the research associations and their reflection on their contribution to it. Special attention was given to issues of inequality, transparency and space that surfaced during the interviews. In order to analyze spaces and the process in which taken-for granted master-narratives can be destabilized the discourse analysis is targeted to interrogate and critique visions of the future narrated from a certain context In the multiple divergent stories the discursive patterns of contingent connections that disengage stories of knowledge hierarchies will be identified (Tsing&Pollman, 2015). It reveals how academic’s resistance can be radically open towards possible futures in the context of dominant narratives, which obscure the condition of their own construction, foregrounding some trends as a subject of concern while excluding others.

Expected Outcomes

Data show that European educational research associations focus and coordinate a unique set of relations and on the basis of constant reflexivity influence the way ‘knowledge spaces are materialized as educational context for further knowledge making’. The place out of which educational research is narrated is shown to be a novel field of knowledge-based research governance. The space analysis shed light on the mechanisms by which narrativity and discursive location can be observed, reflected upon and influenced in this transnational spaces. It is possible to discern that the real potential of European research associations, from the perspective of educational research governance, lies in the capability of reflexively observing and disciplining narrativity about education through practices of contextualization. Considering the institutional hybridity of the European educational research associations, the complexity of their exchange and their collective capacity for reflection these transnational knowledge spaces faces two challenges. They are educating in terms of knowledge exchange taken place within them but also of spatial practices through which the environment for knowledge exchange can be shaped. The paper concludes with a specific and often neglected issue of academic socialization, the limited definition about what an academic is and can become in a highly diverse and mobile social context.

References

Ball, S.J. (1993) What is policy? Texts, trajectories and toolboxes, Discourse, 13(2), 9–17. Ball, S. J. (2008) Some Sociologies of Education: a history of problems and places, and segments and gazes,Sociological Review, 56(4), 650-669. Ball, S. J. (2009)The governance turn! Journal of Education Policy, 24(5), 537-538. DOI: 10.1080/02680930903239904 Bacchi, C. (2000) Policy as Discourse: What does it mean? Where does it get us? Discourse, 21(1), 45-57. DOI: 10.1080/01596300050005493 Hannerz, U. (1996) Transnational Connections – Culture, People and Places. London: Routledge. Pels, D. (2005) Mixing Metaphores: politics of economics of knowledge?, in M. Stehr & V. Meja (Eds) Society and Knowledge: contemporary perspectives in the sociology of knowledge and science, pp. 269-298. New Brunswick: Translation Publishers. Lawn, M. (2007) Governing by Network in Europe: associations, educational research and social partnership, Critical Studies in Education, 48(1), 79-95. Nóvoa, A. (2013) The Blindness of Europe: New Fabrications in the European Educational Space, Sisyphus Journal of Education, 1(1), 104-123. Urry, J. (2007) Mobilities. Cambridge: Polity Press. Seddon, T. (2014) Renewing Sociology of Education? Knowledge Spaces, Situated Enactments, and Sociological Practice in a World on the Move, European Educational Research Journal, 13(1), 9-25. Wodak, R.& Meyer, M. (eds.) (2009) Mehtods for Critical Discourse Analysis

Author Information

Gyöngyvér Pataki (presenting / submitting)

University of Debrecen, Hungary

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