Session Information
23 SES 12 B, Research, Politics and Practice
Symposium
Contribution
In a globalised world inter- and transnational collaborative or comparative research is gaining ground. Whether intercultural comparisons or international competitions, the design, concepts and findings of education research, both qualitative and quantitative, continuously transcend national frames of reference. Both, EU research programs as well as funding schemes of the member states encourage international collaboration, and many European countries have HE policies that support international mobility and networking of staff and students. Although, lately the imperative of internationalisation may be contrasted by tendencies to stabilise and strengthen national frames of reference. For example, national auditing exercises such as the Research Excellence Framework in the UK create structural barriers to international collaboration by rewarding national collaboration over international. Equally, many European regions have HE policies which encourage academics to remain within rigid and traditional subject area boundaries rather than working in interdisciplinary ways. In this symposium we want to discuss how education research is entangled in the paradoxes of funding and finding of international work. We will refer to the triangle of research, politics and practice to orient the perspective of the presented papers on the question how political, cultural and social b/orders are (re)constructed in international research projects. The tensions and challenges of researchers engaging in the business of qualitative international comparative investigations are manifold. They include practical as well as methodological and ethical issues. Moreover, cultural, social and political differences between regions mean that it can be difficult to identify suitable areas for comparison, and even if this is achieved, these differences can mean that comparative work never really moves on from the merely descriptive.
In this symposium we will critically ask about the effects of this imperative of internationalism in education research. The focus, however, will not be on large-scale comparative assessments but rather centre on case-based intercultural approaches. Experiences and data from different international projects, will serve as examples for three case studies on the questions:
- How is “the international” conceptualised? valued? constructed? imagined?
- Which other constructions of belonging are related to the internationalisation of research projects? How are we as researchers doing a “we” and a “them” and (how) does our research contribute to the transformation of both of them?
- What is the active contribution of researchers in this process of de/constructing of national or cultural differences?
The papers take up different aspects of these categories of differentiations. Niemeyer/Zick will delineate the paradoxes of national and social differences. Hummrich/Terstegen will present an intercultural comparative perspective on school-cultures in Germany and the US and explicate some of the methodological challenges related to qualitative intercultural comparisons. Chadderton will elaborate the critical role of the researcher in “doing” race and class and consider some of the ethical challenges of conducting cross-European research. The three papers cover different fields of educational practice and give insights to different cultures of education, so all in all they delineate different dimensions of “doing difference”. Based on her long-standing engagement in international research networks and her conceptual work on knowledge politics Seddon will feedback as a discussant.
References
Adick, C. 2005. “Transnationalisierung als Herausforderung für die International und Interkulturell Vergleichende Erziehungswissenschaft.“ Tertium Comparationis, Vol. 11, No. 2, 243 – 269. Seddon, Terri; Henriksson, Lea; and Niemeyer, Beatrix (Eds.) (2010): Learning and Work and the Politics of Working Life. Global transformations and collective identities in teaching, nursing and social work. London: Routledge. Steiner-Khamsi, Gita; Torney-Purta, Judith; Schwille, John (2002): Introduction: Issues and Insights in Cross-National Analysis of Qualitative Studies. In: New Paradigms and Recurring Paradoxes in Education for Citizenship. An International Comparison. Vol.5. Amsterdam: Elsevier Science Ltd., 1-36. Niemeyer, Beatrix (2007): “Between school and work – dilemmas in European comparative transition research”. In: European journal of vocational training, No 41 - 2007 /2.
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