Abstract:
Many argue that educational research, through its increased engagement in collaborative research arrangements, is leaving the academic ivory tower as it enters the 'real' world of performativity. Certainly, educational research has not been unaffected by the general decline in traditional research cultures and a questioning of conventional ways of doing research. When research is framed by the demands of performativity, the emphasis switches to relevance', policy pay-offs and immediate instrumental contributions to systemic efficiency, rather thanthe academic virtues of 'truth' and the 'disinterested' pursuit of knowledge. However, the changes in the nature of educational research is also attributable to the radical epistemological and methodological questioning epitomised in postmodern perspectives, of which performativity is but one aspect.
In this paper, we will argue that educational research is currently subject to dual trends with a common basis in the 'performative' but pulling in opposite directions. On the one hand, there is a pull towards closure and a locking in to an economy of the same. On the other hand, there is also a greater diversity and openness in the research undertaken, with increased possibilities for trangressive and hybrid research. Both these trends are found in collaborative research and we shall examine the consequent problems and possibilities opened up by the increased incidence of this kind of research.
We shall also examine the effects of research assessment and research quanta in discursively constructing research in ways which locate it within an economy of the same - for example through the foregrounding of outputs rather than inputs and by the differential weighting attached to different kinds of 'output' with a corresponding downgrading of others. Here, there is however another kind of performativity at work, one based on a notion of performing where academics enactively inscribe themselves as 'active researchers' and are juged by their 'performance'. In this situation, the significance accorded the inscribed performance also has the paradoxical effect of stimulating diversity and hybridity.
We will argue that what lies behind these trends is a contemporary 'un-ruliness' of knowledge, a dissensus about what constitutes 'worthwhile' or legitimate knowledge, a questioning of epistemological and methodological paradigms and academic values and cultures. The performative, which itself is no one single thing but can take different forms with different significations, both reflects and contributes to this condition. The production of knowledge outside the academy linked to the surveillance of the researcher, the co-presence of closure and openness, conformity and transgression - all the contemporary trends subsumable under the 'performative' - serve to 'disturb' the ivory tower, making it necessary to think anew about what constitutes educational research and the place of the researcher.
In this paper, we will argue that educational research is currently subject to dual trends with a common basis in the 'performative' but pulling in opposite directions. On the one hand, there is a pull towards closure and a locking in to an economy of the same. On the other hand, there is also a greater diversity and openness in the research undertaken, with increased possibilities for trangressive and hybrid research. Both these trends are found in collaborative research and we shall examine the consequent problems and possibilities opened up by the increased incidence of this kind of research.
We shall also examine the effects of research assessment and research quanta in discursively constructing research in ways which locate it within an economy of the same - for example through the foregrounding of outputs rather than inputs and by the differential weighting attached to different kinds of 'output' with a corresponding downgrading of others. Here, there is however another kind of performativity at work, one based on a notion of performing where academics enactively inscribe themselves as 'active researchers' and are juged by their 'performance'. In this situation, the significance accorded the inscribed performance also has the paradoxical effect of stimulating diversity and hybridity.
We will argue that what lies behind these trends is a contemporary 'un-ruliness' of knowledge, a dissensus about what constitutes 'worthwhile' or legitimate knowledge, a questioning of epistemological and methodological paradigms and academic values and cultures. The performative, which itself is no one single thing but can take different forms with different significations, both reflects and contributes to this condition. The production of knowledge outside the academy linked to the surveillance of the researcher, the co-presence of closure and openness, conformity and transgression - all the contemporary trends subsumable under the 'performative' - serve to 'disturb' the ivory tower, making it necessary to think anew about what constitutes educational research and the place of the researcher.