How do we explain the significance of the validity of our self-study enquiries for the future of educational research?
A symposium at the
British Educational Research Association Annual Meeting,
University of Warwick, 8 September 2006.
Participants:
Margaret Farren, Dublin City University
Jean McNiff (convener), St Mary’s College
Ray O’Neill, St Aidan’s School Dublin
Jane Renowden, St Mary’s College
Jack Whitehead, University of Bath
Discussant: Erica Holley, Oxford Brookes University
The aim of this symposium is to demonstrate the significance of the validity of our self-study enquiries, and their possible implications for the future of educational research. Proceeding from a commitment to reconceptualising educational theory as a living form of research-based practice, we each explain how we have generated our individual living theories of practice in the interests of our own and others’ learning, and in the public interest. We show how, while valuing the diversity of our unique and distinctive contributions, we transform them into collective enquiries that are grounded in our commitments to solidarity in the interests of sustainable social evolution through communicative action.
The originality of our contribution lies in our capacity to show how we transform our ontological values into living critical standards of judgement to test the validity of our individual and living educational theories, and how we systematically develop strong evidence bases of collections of the accounts of practitioners whose studies we support, to show how they have done the same. We draw on these knowledge bases in our efforts to influence policy and practice, within the cultural domains of our diverse contexts, and within contexts of professional learning. We refer throughout to our understanding of how underpinning epistemologies influence social practices, and we aim to contribute to the development of new epistemological commitments that have the potential to extend new economic and social theories of human capability.
We believe that the work presented in this symposium has potential for reconceptualising educational theory, and we also believe in its transformative potentials for social evolution. We understand how the logics and values of underpinning epistemologies influence social practices. Our aim is to contribute to the education of social formations by suggesting how practitioners can transform their normatively power-constituted social situations by developing new inclusive and relational epistemologies, grounded in their ontological values, which transform into living critical criteria and standards of judgement.
The symposium will be interactive, and will use multimedia forms of representation. Participants will be invited to engage throughout.
Links to the papers to be presented are included here:
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