Contributions to this two part symposium address two interconnected questions. First, in an academic context sometimes referred to as ‘post-disciplinary’ and a wider social context of ‘post truth’ politics, we ask what place remains for such notions as discipline, rigour, and systematic inquiry that have previously defined research and distinguished it from more casual inquiry. Does the ‘disciplined’ conduct of educational research constitute a constraint on research creativity or is it essential to the very honouring of  inquiry as ‘research’?

In the context of ECER we are also conscious that these notions are framed and constructed in different ways that reflect the social, cultural and intellectual histories of different nations. When we meet in this shared ‘European’ space, we risk all sorts of misunderstandings unless we develop our understanding of these differences.

In the first part of this symposium we discussed the structure and construction of educational research in more generic terms. In the second, contributors locate some of the wider issues in the particular contexts of educational research in Italy (Conte), Norway (Kvernbekk and Jarning) and post Soviet Ukraine (Fimyar).

Conte argues that we cannot get very far in considering the structure and requirements of research until we have got clear what are our goals in such research. This question leads him to observe the distinction between the goal of providing empirical evidence to assist with current practice and research which is simply concerned with what is the case (without concern for whether this knowledge does or does not assist with a particular educational programme) and with putting current beliefs and assumptions into question. Both forms may have their own ‘rigour’ or discipline’ but these will be different depemding on the goal. Conte explores the ‘dialoguic’ relationship between these two forms of inquiry in the context of contemporary economic and social change in Italy. though the context is one in which the more critical and philosophical forms of inquiry take second place to less challenging empirical inquiry.

Kvernbekk and Jarning’s exploration of these issues in the context of educational research in Norway, which they describe as a’ fluid terrain’ which has gone and continues to go through many changes leaving a trail of subtlely different concepts to describe the field. But they too attach significance to a particular dichotomy which has its roots in the distinction drawn at the time of the establishment of the first educational research department at the University of Oslo in 1938 and was then expressed in the language of ‘knowing why’ and ‘knowing how’. The first, it was argued, was a necessary condition for the second. Kvernbekk and Jarning see parallels between this and Gibbons’ notions of Mode 1 and Mode 2 knowledge with the scales tipping noticeably today in favour of ‘knowing how’.

Finally, Fimyar takes us into a rather different world of ‘pedagogical sciences’ in the Ukraine – a world which, she argues,  is unhelpfully structured by a Soviet typology of education research based on a distinction between ‘fundamental’, ‘applied’ and implementation’ research. Educational research is treated as a ‘science’ though Fimyar follows Grebennikova in preferring to refer to it as ‘pseudo science’. Her paper is offered as a form of analysis of the discourse of educational research in the context of Ukraine based on key textbooks and official documents. Like the other papers in this part of the symposium it raises questions about the what sort of knowledge educational research is or should be concerned with as well as what are the structural requirements required to support such endeavour.

References as for individual papers but see also Bridges,D. (2017) Philosophy in Educational Research: Epistemology, Ethics Politics and Quality. Dordrecht: Springer