Session Information
00 SES 09.1 Keynote, What Is Educational Research For?
Keynote Speaker
The Keynote will be streamed to room B029
Contribution
Why do we need research in education? To think and to engage in multiple conversations.
To think, that is, to open new possibilities for thinking, to broaden the spectrum of our ways of thinking and talking about education.
To engage in multiple conversations, that is, to relate different “worlds” and perspectives through knowledge produced about education.
In this sense, education research needs to be understood as a provocation of thought and a place for dialogues.
“Devoted to the search for truth, we do not always reach it; if and when we arrive through analyses or equations, experiments or formal proofs, but also through experimentation, sometimes, and, when experimentation doesn’t get you there, let the story go there, if it can; if meditation fails, why not try narrative?” (Michel Serres).
More than engaging in a never-ending discussion about the “identity” of the educational research field or about methods and techniques, I believe that we should look at how research can enrich and enlighten our practices and discussions.
In this sense, we need to listen to the “warnings” addressed by authors such as David Labaree, when he ironically talks about the need for research “to be irrelevant, wrong and lazy”, or Isabelle Stengers, when she addresses a plea for “slow science”.
The point is to enrich, to deepen and to diversify our understanding of educational matters. There is no simple way to accomplish this intention. We can’t hope to reach a consensus on how to organize and to conduct research in education. But we can engage in an intellectual dialogue between different people and different perspectives
Method
Expected Outcomes
References
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