Doing Qualitative Research in – serie

This is a book for all researchers in educational settings whose research is motivated by considerations of justice, fairness and equity. It addresses questions such researchers have to face. Will a prior political or ethical commitment bias the research? How far can the ideas of empowerment or 'giving a voice' be realised? How can researchers who research communities to which they belong deal with the ethical issues of being both insider and outsider?The book provides a set of principles for doing educational research for social justice. These are rooted in considerations of methodology, epistemology and power relations, and provide a framework for dealing with the practical issues of collaboration, ethics, bias, empowerment, voice, uncertain knowledge and reflexivity, at all stages of research from getting started to dissemination and taking responsibility as members of the wider community of educational researchers.Theoretical arguments and the realities of practical research are brought together and interwoven. Thus the book will be helpful to all researchers, whether they are just beginning their first project, or whether they are already highly experienced. It will be of great value to research students in designing and writing up their theses and dissertations.

* What is historical research in education?* How can researchers get started in this area?* Why does this field offer a common project for historians, educationists, and researchers across the social sciences?This book explores how to set about historical research in education. The first general guide of its kind for fifty years, the book locates this field in relation to changes in educational research, historical research, and a wide range of social sciences. It offers a theoretical guide to the rationales and problems of the field as well as to current opportunities for research. It also gives practical advice for getting started and for suitable research methods in different kinds of projects, and in doing so draws critically on extensive international literature. It includes detailed case studies on the following topics in historical research: Curriculum and Classrooms, Foucauldian Interpretations, the 'Alternative Road', Literacy in the Nineteenth Century, and the University History Curriculum.

This book argues for independent, critical research on education policy in the context of attacks on the quality and usefulness of educational research in general. It takes issue with the argument, promoted bygovernment departments and agencies that education policy research should be limited to work that assists policy-makers. Against this position, the book advocates independent, critical research that scrutinizes policy in relation to its consequences for equality and social justice. It argues that practitioners and academic researchers should form a research community that develops its own knowledge base from which so-called evidence based policymaking in education may be assessed and challenged. The book offers guidance on the theoretical and methodological resources available to practitioners and others with an interest in doing research on policy and discusses some of the main issues and problems in doing policy research on education. It offers examples of research on policy at different system levels, pursuing themes such as globalization, changing governance of education, selection, choice and exclusion, managerialism and the feminisation of educational management. It argues for attention to the history of policy in education as a resource for understanding the present, and concludes with recommendations for future research in areas where contestation of official agendas is needed.

"In this bold and very important work, Peter Clough shows how the truths about educational issues can be told using fictional devices. This work legitimates the narrative turn in the human disciplines. He shows educational researchers how narrative inquiry can be used for progressive moral and political purposes". -Norman K. Denzin, University of Illinois at Urbana-ChampaignThis compelling book takes a fresh approach to educational research, considering the role and use of literary and ethnographic approaches. There is growing interest in the use of narrative and fictional methods and this book sets out to:* locate narrative and fictional methods within the traditions of education research;* exemplify the use of narrative in studies of educational and social settings; * explain the processes of composing narrative and fictional researchA distinctive feature of the book is the inclusion of five 'fictional' stories which demonstrate the use of narrative in reporting research. Detailed discussion of these five stories shows how they were created from actual events and the varied role of the author in their creation. The methodological implications of such an approach are considered along with its potential merits and difficulties and its possible uses.