Session Information
13 SES 03, Research Workshop
Research Workshop
Contribution
Philosophers as different as different as Plato, Rousseau and Dewey have each outlined a philosophy of education intended to promote freedom, though, in each case, the appeal to and conception of freedom was different. The aim of this workshop is to explore the extent to which different conceptions of freedom are not only promoted by different educational philosophies but are also embedded in different educational research methodologies.
The particular claim we wish to develop is as follows:
In selecting a particular research methodology an educational researcher does not only exercise his or her intellectual preference (borne of his or her training, past expertise, interest or taste). Since educational research methodologies promote different conceptions of freedom, it follows that, by selecting a particular methodology, an educational researcher expresses a political commitment to a particular view of freedom. In this sense, methodological choices are always already political and should be interrogated as such.
To exemplify and substantiate this general argument we will explore and contrast the different conceptions of freedom informing three very different research methodologies. Based on the work of major European philosophers, these are: Derridean deconstruction, Foucauldian genealogy and Habermassian critical social science. We will argue that the political nature of our methodological choices should be recognised, not as a limitation, but as a key feature to be exploited and developed. The potential contribution to the pursuit of freedom in educational research offered by Derridean, Foucauldian and Habermassian approaches will be explored through three concrete examples. We will offer a brief analysis of what, in turn, each methodology could offer to:
1. the free school movement in Sweden and England.
2. the global occupy movement.
3. contemporary experiments with emancipatory education in South America.
Method
Expected Outcomes
References
Allen, A. (2009) ‘The Foucauldian Peacekeeper: On the Dispersion of Power and the Futility of Change’ Power and Education 1 (2) 226-237. Allen, A. (2011) ‘The idea of a world university: can Foucauldian research offer a vision of educational futures?’ Pedagogy, Culture & Society 19 (3) 367-383. Derrida, J. (1998) Letter to a Japanese Friend in D.Wood and R. Bernasconi (eds) Derrida and Différance. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, pp. 1-11. Carr, W. (1995) For Education: Towards Critical Educational Inquiry. Open University Press. Buckingham. Fay, B. (1987) Critical Social Science: Liberation and its Limits. Cambridge University Press: Cambridge. Foucault, M. (1971) ‘Nietzsche, Genealogy, History’ in J D Faubion (ed) [2000] Aesthetics, Method, and Epistemology - Essential Works of Michel Foucault - Volume Two London: Penguin 369-389. Habermas J. (1972) Knowledge and Human Interests. Heinmann: London. Winter, C. (2006) ‘Doing justice to Geography in the secondary school: deconstruction, invention and the National Curriculum’ British Journal of Educational Research 54 (2) 212-229. Wood, D. (1998) Différance and the problem of strategy in D.Wood and R. Bernasconi (eds) Derrida and Différance. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, pp. 63-69.
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