Educational Research: Discourses of Change and Changes of Discourse, Softcover reprint of the original 1st ed. 2016 Educational Research Series, Vol. 9

This collection addresses concepts and theories of change, contexts and functions of reform discourses, and fields of change in educational research. It examines a wide variety of issues such as girls? education in France, educational neuroscience, the professionalization in Child Protection, and mathematics discourses. It pays attention to the pervasiveness of crisis rhetoric in American Education Research, to the current university climate, and to perspectives for teacher education. The volume presents in-depth studies that integrate the perspective of history and philosophy of education.

Educational research has been typically carried out within a discourse of change: changing educational practice, changing policy, or changing the world. Sometimes these expectations have been grand, as in claims of emancipation; sometimes they have been more modest, as in research as a support for specific reforms. This book explores the answers to such questions as: Are these expectations justified? How have these discourses of change themselves changed over time? What have researchers meant by change, and related concepts such as reform, improvement, innovation, progress and the new? Does this teleological and hopeful discourse itself reflect a particular historical and national/cultural point of view? Is it over promising for educational research to claim to solve social problems, and are these properly understood as educational problems? In doing so, it challenges prevailing ideas about the application of philosophy and history of education, and demonstrates the relevance of philosophical and historical approaches for the practice and theory of education and for educational research.

This publication, as well as the ones that are mentioned in the preliminary pages of this work, were realized by the Research Community (FWO Vlaanderen / Research Foundation Flanders, Belgium) Philosophy and History of the Discipline of Education: Faces and Spaces of Educational Research.

About the Authors.- 1. Mutual Dependencies: ‘Change’ and ‘Discourse’; Paul Smeyers and Marc Depaepe.- 2. Technology, Education, and the Fetishization of the ‘New’; Nicholas C. Burbules.- 3. Managing Change and the Language of Change; Richard Smith.- 4. How is it Possible to Make a Difference? Agency, Actors, and Affect as Discourses of Change in Education Research; Lynn Fendler.- 5. ‘Too Busy for Thoughts’: Stress, Tiredness and Finding a Home in the University; Naomi Hodgson.- 6. Creativity, Education and the Future; Ian Munday.- 7. Neuromyths for Educational Research and the Educational Field?; Paul Smeyers.- 8. On the Plurality of Mathematics Discourses: Between Power and Constraints; Karen François, Kathleen Coessens and Jean Paul Van Bendegem.- 9. Learning to Love the Bomb: The Cold War Brings the Best of Times to American Higher Education; David F. Labaree.- 10. Change of Discourses: Theoretical Perspectives for US Teacher Education; Lynda Stone.- 11. From the French Republican Educational Reforms to the ABCD de l’Égalité: Thinking about Change in the History of Girls’ Education in France; Rebecca Rogers.- 12. The ‘Crisis’ Problem: On the Pervasiveness of Crisis Rhetoric in American Education Research; Ethan Hutt.- 13. “It’s the language, stupid!” Colorblind and Tone-deaf as Discourses of Change in Educational Research; Jeff Bale.- 14. A Belief in Magic. Professionalization in Post Second World War Forced Child Protection; Jeroen J.H. Dekker.- 15. It’s All about Interpretation: Discourses at Work in Education Museums. The case of Ypres; Marc Depaepe and Frank Simon.- Author Index.- Subject Index.

Challenges prevailing ideas about the “application” of philosophy and history of education

Demonstrates in a unique way how philosophical and historical approaches are relevant for the practice and theory of education and for educational research

Debates the historical and philosophical complexities and constraints concerning discourses of change and the change of discourse in the educational field