Researchers’ Identities and Identifications in the Era of an Audit Culture

Anna Tsatsaroni, Associate Professor, University of the Peloponnese, Greece*

Despina Tsakiris, Assistant Professor, University of the Peloponnese, Greece

Paper presented at the European Conference on Educational Research, University of

Geneva, 13-15 September 2006

I. Introduction: formulating the research problemPolitical decisions by national governments around the world regarding research, and

initiatives by supranational entities - in particular E.U. policies to create a ‘European

Research Area’ – have evidently resulted in the establishment of systems of evaluation and

public accountability of research activity. In the official documents this interest in research is

linked to the need of national or regional (e.g., E.U.) political authorities to create

competitive economies, and better organised and/or more just societies. However, such

policies very often end up constraining research practices rather than achieving their stated

aims. This all pervasive ‘audit culture’ has substantial effects on current research activity -

though, in the related literature this is seen as being constantly resisted and discursively re-

articulated in specific organizational and institutional sites.

This paper is an attempt to use work-in-progress to reflect on current conditions of

research from the point of view of Educational Studies, a field we consider to be a privileged

point of entry. This is for many reasons. Some are discussed later with reference to the Greek

context; here we mention two. First, like education, educational research is high on the

agenda of policy makers; and so it is more likely to be affected by the latter’s activity.

Second, because as Middleton (2004) notes, the imperative of the currently dominant

discourse to ‘be a researcher’ (e.g., an ‘active researcher’) might re-inscribe hard-won

positions and understandings of what it means today to be an educational researcher/scholar

(see also Nixon et. al., 2003).

One important aspect of research activity today, especially in the Social Sciences,

including Educational Studies, is that the model of production of knowledge is changing. For

example more emphasis is given to:* Department of Social and Education Policy, Damaskinou & Kolokotroni, 20100, Corinth, email: tsatsaro@uop.gr

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applied research;

principles of co-operation and competition, in order to increase productivity

of knowledge creating efforts;

co-operation of the public with the private sectors;

co-operation of university and stakeholders.

Also emphasis is given to the creation of strong networks and groups of researchers

with national, inter-national and global dimensions, and of critical masses of researchers for

advancement in knowledge creation. The repositioning of research (cf. Goodson, 1999) and

the changes in the model of knowledge creation and research practices (cf. Beck & Young,

2005) may lead to changes in the identities of researchers. Hence the question of how

identities of researchers in the field of Educational Studies are formed today.

The topic of our work-in-progress is the orientations, identities and identifications of

Greek academic researchers working in Education. The broad parameters framing our

attempts to constitute our research object within the Greek context result from the following

features:

The complex history of the development of the field in Greece, the

‘upgrading’ of Colleges of Education into University Departments that took

place in the mid 1980s- with its politics around processes of staff (re)selection

- being only one, albeit crucial, moment;

the absence of a Greek national body representing the various specialized

fields of research, for example in the European Educational Research

Association (cf. Kenk, 2003, EERA, 2006);

the fact that education researchers have been participants in a ‘resistance

movement’ of Greek academic staff, which up until now has refused to accept

or negotiate a system of evaluation of Higher Education institutions;

the clientilistic practices for the allocation of national and European resources

going into research;

the substantial increase, since the late ‘80s, in the research production in

Educational Studies, which however leaves open the crucial question as to

what it is that is produced.

Our current work aims to develop a problematic to organize empirical research on this

topic. It is aided by a re-examination of two studies conducted previously, each involving one

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of the present authors. Both projects had concentrated on the textual productions of

researchers in the fields studied. Following this work, our current work in progress builds on

the premise that the text is the space where the subject ‘Educational Studies’ and the subject

as subjectivity of the educational researcher are constituted (cf. Middleton, 2004). Text is the

space where social practice is inscribed and (re)articulated. An approach to the field of

(education) research as constituted in and through its textual productions, might differ from

approaches that focus on the narrative stories of its practitioners (Solomon & Tsatsaroni,

2001); though the latter can be understood as an instance of the former.

The paper consists of five main sections. Section II reviews studies on education

research practices, critically considering the notion of ‘audit culture’ that this research seems

to presuppose. Section III revisits a study on mathematics education research practice done

by Lerman and Tsatsaroni (Lerman et al, 2002; Tsatsaroni, et al, 2003), and discusses its

approach. Section IV discusses current theoretical concerns, which inform our problematic

which itself builds on Bernstein’s work of intellectual fields and knowledge structures; this

provides a way of thinking about educational studies as a field of research practice. Section V

introduces a completed project by Tsakiris (2005) and assesses its possibility for utilising the

available data by building a research tool to explore questions about educational studies as a

field of research, and the forms of social regulation of the practitioners in the field. The final

section, section VI, summarises theoretical and methodological concerns, posing further

questions.

II. Scientific-research practice and the ‘audit culture’: A brief literature

reviewIn discussing the socio-political climate in which research activity is currently carried

out, researchers often take issue with a perceived lack of space for social science, understood

as an effect of the dominance of narrow evaluation criteria of efficiency and policy driven

agendas of research. Thus paradoxically, whilst funding levels for social science research

may have increased, selectivity may be resulting in the undermining and undervaluation of

forms of social scientific discourse and practice, as well as their appropriation and distortion

by powerful policy discourses: a perceived double danger for social science knowledge

creation, reproduction, use and dissemination (Cooper and Tsatsaroni, 2006). Thus the threats

to research are obvious. Powerful discourses require social research to account for itself in

different terms and to be subject to an increasing pragmatic sensibility which questions the

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value of certain practices and forms of research (Cooper and Tsatsaroni, 2006). So, as Moore

(2005) also notes, partly as an instrumental response to such requirements, and partly through

an internalization of a wider discourse of pragmatism, pragmatism itself is conceived of as a

virtue and takes on ideological significance.

Central to these descriptions and understandings of practices of knowledge production

is the notion of audit, which has been explicated by a number of social and political theorists.

Thus Power (1997) defines an ‘audit society’ as a society organized to observe itself through

the mechanisms of audit in the service of programmes for control. Rose (1999) uses the

notion of audit technologies to refer to a rather mundane set of routines that purport to enable

judgements to be made about the activities of professionals, now including academics; a

process in which the technical requirements of audit displace the internal logics of expertise.

In educational research the literature on the topic of educational research (in the

current socio-political context) has been steadily growing and so are the perspectives, levels

of analysis and issues addressed. The notion of audit has been taken up and this has led to

three analytically distinguished forms of research writings.

1.Theoretical work such as Steven Ball’s on (supra)national policies on education and

research which draws on the concept of audit. This work conceptualizes policies as

‘disciplinary tactics’ which attempt to change not only what academics do, but who they are

(Ball, 2001). Connecting this notion with concepts such as performativity and

governmentality Ball draws a line between instrumental political discourse and practice and

critical (sociological-scientific) discourse and practice. The latter is used to critique and argue

against the impositions of policy on research practices and the identities of academics. In his

essay on ‘Educational Studies, Policy Entrepreneurship and Social Theory’ (1998/2006) he

addresses the restrictive ‘steering’ of educational research by the state and the development

of a hegemony of ‘state relevance’. ‘Effectiveness Research’ is here used as a prime example

to illustrate the current state of educational research: its gradual fragmentation, and its re-

incorporation into the state and its objectives, what he describes as the ‘taming of academy’:

We can re-envision educational studies as a whole as a disciplinary technology, part of the exercise of disciplinary power. Management, effectiveness and appraisal, for example…work together to locate individuals in space, in a hierarchical and efficiently visible organization. In and through our research, the school and the teacher are captured within a perfect diagram of power; and the classroom is increasingly one of those ‘small theatres’, in which ‘each actor is alone, perfectly individualized and constantly visible’ (Foucault, 1979a, p.20). It is thus that governmentality is achieved through the minute mechanisms of everyday life and the application of ‘progressive’ and efficient technical solutions to designated problems. Governmentality being that ‘ensemble formed by the institutions, procedures, analyses and reflections, the calculations and tactics, that allow the exercise of this very specific albeit complex form of power, which has as its target population’ (Foucault, 1979b, 20).

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It is in this way that epistemological development within the human sciences, like education, functions politically and is intimately imbricated in the practical management of social and political problems.

(Ball, 1998/2006, p.59; emphasis in the original)

2. Empirically orientated research which aims to study the impact of audit on academics. A

representative example is Middleton (2004). Her study aims to reveal, through detailed

interviews, ‘powerful stories’ showing how such systems of evaluation are ‘disciplining the

subject’. This, it is argued, affects academics’ senses of professional identity, the substance

and methods of their research priorities, the choice of how and where to disseminate their

findings, and their willingness to participate in institutional activities and responsibilities.

3. A third category of research writings concerning research can be identified by looking at

scientific texts which are contributions to current debates and disputes in the field. These

texts could be seen to be responses to perceived or actual political imposition on research.

Examples here include: Taking a position for or against the proliferation of competing

theoretical discourses; defending expanded notions of ‘scientificity’, to help sustain education

as a field of scholarship and research; and showing concern about what is seen as a

reassessment and re-ordering of theoretical traditions taking place, as an effect of audit (e.g.,

Clegg, 2005; Yates, 2004, 2005; Hodkinson, 2004; Wellington & Nixon, 2005; Lather,

2006).

These forms of research writings are significant contributions to the topic of research

on research, yet such approaches entail certain ‘dangers’. The first, discussed in Cooper and

Tsatsaroni (2006) is an ‘analytic danger’ that might result from the way the problem is

formulated, where educational research (or certain disciplines, or areas of study within such

disciplines) are taken in essentialist terms as bounded, internally consistent entities that are

under threat from external forces. Paradoxically, this tends to proliferate theoretical

languages, each of which, posed as unique, can become a new orthodoxy in a given field of

research. There, in turn, lies a second danger, that is when theory becomes ‘a sacred within a

profane world' (Cooper & Tsatsaroni, 2006, p.6)1. This is, for example, when the perception 1 Consider the following: ‘This then is my backcloth. In epigrammatic form I want to suggest now that we have too much knowledge and not enough understanding. I want to put some epistemological distance between myself and the developments I have been reviewing. I want to celebrate theory. I wish to argue that the absence of theory leaves the researcher prey to unexamined, unreflexive preconceptions and dangerously naïve ontological and epistemological a prioris. I shall wail and curse at the absence of theory and argue for theory as a way of saving educational studies from itself’ (Ball, 1998/2006, p.62; second italics added). The use of this passage to illustrate our point made in the text should not be taken as a wholesale criticism against what we consider to be a very powerful piece of writing on the subject of our inquiry. Note here, however, the difference between Steven Ball and Basil Bernstein (1977, 2001) who has argued for a need to develop a research practice which is ‘less an allegiance to an approach, and more a dedication to a problem’; though the question of ‘whose problem’ should always be in focus. Notwithstanding this potential basis for debate, for us the contribution of Ball’s paper lies in its offering valuable means in our attempts to model academic identities of educational

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of a theoretical approach as being opposed to the audit culture invests it with (critical) value

as a source of resistance, whether epistemological or political. This often serves to exclude

the possibility of the theory to be submitted to a critical reflection within the research

community itself. We would argue that such an approach to research though it may not

coincide with powerful policy discourses on research, it is not completely foreign to it.

A third reason why we think that current approaches to research about educational

research are limited, is that they serve to create a context in which audit as control excerts its

hegemony on other possible meanings of evaluation – a view which is imposed through its

(often mechanical) repetition in different research sites. That is to say, in aiming to reveal the

mechanisms of control and the power relations inscribed in audit processes, significant

processes of evaluation which could work in the interests of reflexivity become penalised and

discarded (Ardoino et Berger, 1989). Furthermore, the overwhelming interest in an audit

culture and its effects on researchers or research productions does not allow enough space for

debates on the basic notions of audit, evaluation, control, and the social realities to which

they refer – and consequently on reflexive practice on the field’s own research discourse. To

put it differently, the implicit assumption of researchers that such a research culture has been

already fully instituted within the field, does not allow questions about it to be raised. This

mirrors the ways in which policy makers understand reality, and on the basis of this act

selectively on perspectives or theoretical paradigms which they think (or simply argue) would

improve it.

The issue can be raised thus: when reference is made to audit in the fields of

educational studies, the term audit culture is used. And here there is some ambiguity: is it a

political program, or an already existing culture that permeates not only the political sphere

but the scientific practices, too? But culture is not something which is imposed, it is formed

and expressed in practices when the latter become solidified. In the absence of such research

on practice, the term audit culture in the scientific discourse is used unreflectively2; raising

questions about the empirical validity of the claim.

Thus there are contradictions and tensions within both spheres:

researchers, so as to assist empirical research; See sections III and IV. 2 Or should we say that the certainty that theoretical analysis provides, as in the passage below, would make any empirical work redundant? ‘Once again there is an intellectual trade between government and educational studies, a new economy of ideas and a new generation of single-idea policy advisers…School effectiveness is in some sense the zenith of modernist intellectualism, a final accommodation between popular meaning and social research’ (Ball, 1998/2006, p. 61).

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a. Within the political discourse there is a tension as policy makers attempt to impose

something which by definition cannot be imposed, but develops in different contexts through

practice.

b. Within scientific discourse, especially in educational studies and research, the audit culture

is taken for granted, and researchers are only concerned with its consequences and

implications either on the research production itself, or the persons that produce research. In

taking for granted the existence of an audit culture, educational researchers - in ways that

mirror policy makers - become instrumental, in that they help to impose a particular scientific

discourse which is used unreflectively as the dominant interpretation of a social reality.

From this brief critical review of the three analytically distinguished – though only

indicative and not exhaustive3 - categories of research on current research practice in

conditions of auditing, we can argue that though this research is important it still can serve to

reproduce the dominant political discourses rather than challenge them. These somehow

critical points about the existing literature on audit in research practice allows us to keep open

the question of how to study current research practices, given the political programmes which

attempt to control research, in many fields and in the fields of educational studies in

particular.

III. Developing a methodology to study changes in research practices: The

‘Mathematics Education Research’ studyThe ‘Mathematics Education Research’ study, led by Steve Lerman (Lerman et al.

2002, Tsatsaroni, et al. 2003) and funded by ESRC (U.K.), was carried out in the period

2001-2003, and aimed to examine systematically the research productions of the mathamatics

education community, a small but key community within educational researchers. Drawing

on Basil Bernstein’s work, especially his essay on ‘Vertical and Horizontal Discourse’

(Bernstein, 1999) this study sought to raise questions concerning the field’s standing, the

position of the actors in this field and their positioning vis-à-vis other knowledge fields, the

official discourses, and the field of school practices. In order to study changes over time in

the form of specialization of this research activity, a systematic sample of published papers in

the field (n=423) was selected over a period of 12 years. Three research publishing sites,

3 For example research undertaken to show how knowledges produced by researchers have or have not been utilised by policy makers to formulate policies could perhaps be another relevant category. This is because in many such cases this becomes an occasion where reviews of relevant research and therefore of knowledge produced on a given topic are undertaken. For an example, see van Zanten (2006)

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chosen to depict practices characteristic of this research sub-field at the international level,

were used. These were as follows:

- ESM (Educational Studies in Mathematics)

- JRME (Journal for Research in Mathematics Education)

- PME (Proceedings of the International Group for the Psychology of Mathematics

Education)

The first is the key English-language European journal. The second is the journal of

the National Council for the Teaching of Mathematics and is the key journal based in the

U.S.A. The third relates to the annual conference proceedings of the international research

group for the field of mathematics education. This was established in 1976 and enjoys high

recognition by practitioners in the field.

A research tool was developed for multi-dimensional classification of the sampled

research studies; for a detailed description of the methodology of the study, see below and

also Tsatsaroni et al. (2003).

The features of the activity that the data represents were identified on the basis of an

interpretative schema consisting of two axes: A vertical axis, which provided information on

the agents’ positioning in their activity, the two extremes of the axis characterised as looking

inwards and looking outwards, respectively. ‘Inwards’ referred to either, or both, the wider

intellectual field, or/and their own field, while ‘outwards’ referred to either, or both, the

public sphere or/and the state/school field. The horizontal axis provided information on the

form of the agents’ engagement with the activity. This again involves either a critical or a

functional stance, as the two extremes of the axis. ‘Critical’ presupposes an engagement with

intellectual resources (of their own or others) with a view to developing their (and other)

field(s) resources of research or an engagement in activity seen as strengthening the public

sphere (including the schools). Functional refers to an engagement with their (or others’)

field(s) resources which is using the resources to describe (educational) reality, or an

engagement which uses the resources to prescribe actions in the field perceived as the field of

its application.

On the basis of this schema, the main finding of the study describes researchers’ activity,

mainly, as:

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Having a positioning in the mathematics education research field based on looking

inwards, towards the wider intellectual field, rather than outwards.

Engaging with the activity in functional ways, using resources to carry out their

perceived tasks, rather than developing their own or others’ resources.

This main finding is illustrated in more detail below, using categories of the research tool

that are operationalisations of positioning and engagement in research activity.

Table 1 depicts results using the category ‘orientation’ (a facet of positioning) of the

research tool, the choices being ‘privileging the theoretical’ and ‘privileging the empirical’

domains4. The majority of research papers in the examined sample of publications report on

empirical investigations (84.5%, 70.1% & 86.2% for PME, ESM & JRME respectively; an

average of 79.5% in the three sites taken together). This indicates that empirical inquiry is the

predominant research activity in the field. However there is also space for theoretical work,

with 29,9% of publications in ESM being characterised as privileging the theoretical.

Table 1. Orientation of the Research Study

Theoretical Privileged

% Empirical Privileged

% Total

PME 23 15.6 125 84.5 148

ESM 53 29.9 124 70.1 177

JRME 19 13.8 119 86.2 138

Total 95 20.5 368 79.5 463

Source: Tsatsaroni et al. 2003 (Appendix 2, Table 1)

Table 2 depicts the category of the research tool ‘use of theory’ (a facet of

positioning), with the entries: ‘theory not used’ and ‘theory used explicitly/implicitly’. Again,

4 Concrete examples as to how the categories of the research tool were applied are provided in Tsatsaroni et al, 2003.

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the majority of the publications examined fall into the latter category (89.9%, 92.7% &

83.3% for PME, ESM & JRME, respectively; an average of 79.5% in the three sites taken

together). It is worth noting that for each of the three publication sites, the % of implicit

theory use was of the order of 7% (6% – 8%). So the data indicates that in reports of

empirical investigations theory appears to be informing the empirical in the majority of

papers.

Table 2. Use of Theory

Theory Not Used

% Theory Used Implicitly/

Explicitly

% Total

PME 15 10.1 133 89.9 148

ESM 13 7.3 164 92.7 177

JRME 23 16.7 115 83.3 138

Total 51 11.0 368 79.5 463

Source: based on Tsatsaroni et al. 2003 (Appendix2, Table 2)

Table 3a depicts results using the category ‘researcher’s engagement with theory’ (a

facet of engagement) of the research tool. Here the entries are: ‘support’, ‘modify’, ‘oppose’,

‘simply use’, and ‘do not use theory’. The predominant entry is ‘simply use’ (76.4%, 76.3%

& 73.9% for PME, ESM & JRME respectively).

Table 3b collapses the first three rows of Table 3a, showing the overall tendencies

more clearly. In the majority of papers, researchers are content with simply using theory

rather than engaging with it, as it is when a researcher tries to ‘test’ and develop theory

(13.5%, 16.4% & 9.4% only, for PME, ESM & JRME respectively fall within the latter

category). In relation to this finding, the authors note that no change in the pattern has been

observed, and so this feature appears to be constant in the period examined.

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Table 3a. Researchers’ engagement with theory

PME % ESM % JRME %

11 7.4 27 15.3 10 7.2

8 5.4 2 1.1 2 1.5

1 0.7 0 0.0 1 0.7

113 76.4 135 76.3 102 73.9

15 10.1 13 7.3 23 16.7

148 177 138

Simply use

Do not use theory

Total

Support

Modify

Oppose

Source: Tsatsaroni et al. 2003 (Appendix 2, Table 4)

Table 3b. Researchers’ engagement with theory

PME % ESM % JRME %

Develop (‘Test’) 20 13.5 29 16.4 13 9.4

Simply Use 113 76.4 135 76.3 102 73.9

Theory Not Used 15 10.1 13 7.3 23 16.7

Total 148 177 138

Table 4 depicts results using the category ‘theory type’ (a facet of engagement) of the

research tool. The drive to draw resources from other fields is evident. The authors note that

the range of the theories researchers in the field draw on is changing, and an expanding range

of theories is being used in all three kinds of texts examined. Especially interesting appears to

be the finding that there is an increase in the use of broadly sociologically informed

approaches, in which psycho-social, sociological, socio cultural theories, and the fields of

linguistics, social linguistics and semiotics are included. This is especially noticeable for the

articles from ESM and JRME, where increases in this broader category from15% to 37% and

from 11% to 29% respectively were found between the two time periods.

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Table 4. Theory type

PME ESM JRME90-95 96-01 90-95 96-01 90-95 96-01No. % No. % No. % No. % No. % No. %

Traditional psychological & mathematical theories

49 73.1 49 60.5 52 63.4 49 51.6 34 54.8 44 57.9

Psycho-social, including re-emerging ones

8 11.9 8 9.9 8 9.8 19 20.0 4 6.5 10 13.2

Sociology, sociology of ed, socio-cultural studies & historically orientated studies

2 3.0 8 9.9 3 3.7 11 11.6 1 1.6 6 7.9

Linguistics, social linguistics & semiotics

0 0.0 2 2.5 1 1.2 5 5.3 2 3.2 6 7.9

Neighbouring fields of maths ed, science ed and curriculum studies

1 1.5 0 0.0 0 0.0 0 0.0 1 1.6 0 0.0

Recent broader theoretical currents, feminism, post-structuralism and psychoanalysis

1 1.5 0 0.0 8 9.8 1 1.1 0 0.0 1 1.3

Philosophy/philo of mathematics

0 0.0 3 3.7 0 0.0 3 3.2 1 1.6 1 1.3

General educational theory and research

2 3.0 0 0.0 1 1.2 1 1.1 2 3.2 0 0.0

Other 0 0.0 0 0.0 1 1.2 1 1.1 2 3.2 0 0.0No theory used 4 6.0 11 13.6 8 9.8 5 5.3 15 24.2 8 10.5Total 67 81 82 95 62 76

Psycho-social etc, sociology etc, linguistics etc

10/67 15 18/81 22 12/82 15 35/95 37 7/62 11 22/76 29

Source: Tsatsaroni et al. 2003 (Appendix 2, Table 3)

Overall the authors argue that the picture created by the data captures the changing

nature of its discourse. In particular, they argue that researchers’ identities in mathematics

education research bear the mark of a historical turn in educational studies towards its

technologizing; the latter as discussed by Bernstein (1990, 161-163) with reference to the

changes over time effected upon the organisation of knowledge for the training of teachers.

Of particular interest in the transformations of knowledge, at least in the context of the U.K.

that Bernstein examined, is the stage characterised by the rise of ‘curriculum studies’ in the

1960s, which, Bernstein argues, represents the beginning of the technologizing of teacher

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training. The dominance of curriculum studies, Bernstein notes, has also been marked by its

close relationship to the state, at a time when the state began its move towards explicit control

over the contents of the school. According to Bernstein’s account, this is accompanied by the

rise of the dominance of policy, management and assessment5.

The authors also argue that researchers’ identities in the field bear the marks of the

current mode of its regulation, which tend to produce identities whose products have an

exchange value either in their own field, or the field of its supposed application. For example,

the tendency of researchers in the field to draw on other theories, has been linked to other

findings in the study (e.g., on method and on how theories are used) and has been interpreted

as a tendency to instrumentalise theories. This supports their argument about a positioning in

the field where legitimate career advancement practices and practices as effects of given

relations of power become difficult to distinguish. In particular, pressures exercised upon

researchers to appear to be innovating, as when they draw on new theories in order to make

unique spaces from which to speak in novel ways, makes it difficult to distinguish

empirically between career advancement strategies and strategies of survival. This tendency

to instrumentalise theories has been also supported in the study by the finding that very few

articles have been engaged in opening debates in the period examined.

The study draws on Bernstein’s work, which provides a clear conceptual framework to

organise the research. Essentially, this suggests that to study the possibilities of a field (or

sub-field) for autonomous academic work in the current difficult conjuncture one needs to

combine two kinds of knowledge (Tsatsaroni, 2006). First, knowledge of its internal

organizational structure for producing knowledge, i.e. of the intellectual field itself

(Bernstein, 1999). Second, knowledge of recontextualisation of knowledge in Higher

Education curricula, through which new members are socialised into a field of knowledge;

i.e., knowledge concerning the pedagogic transmission of the knowledge of the field

(Bernstein, 2000, ch. 3, pp.41-63). The study discussed here had focused on the first, and the

main theoretical starting point was that the internal structure of the research field of

educational studies comprises sub-fields of activity – ‘mathematics education research’,

‘educational management’, ‘education policy’, ‘ICT in education’ being such sub-fields -

with horizontal knowledge structures. These are to be distinguished from hierarchical

knowledge structures, exemplified by the natural sciences, which are motivated towards

greater and greater integrating propositions, operating at more and more abstract levels. In

5 On the development of the field of curriculum studies in the U.K., see Goodson (1995).

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contrast, each of the education research sub-fields consists of a series of specialised

languages with specialised modes of interrogation and criteria for the construction and

circulation of texts. Here developments take the form of the addition of a new language, an

additional segment, rather than greater generality and integrative potential. One crucial point

with respect to this is that a horizontal knowledge structure forms a kind of collection code

(Bernstein, 1971), with a weak grammar, i.e. with a conceptual syntax not capable of

generating unambiguous empirical descriptions. However, the contested nature of all (social)

educational research entailed by the use of different interpretations is not a problem in itself;

but in a socio-political context requiring the creation of ‘objective’ knowledge this feature of

the field of educational studies might indeed be a crucial issue.

Second, the study reviewed here aspired to develop a methodology for studying

educational research practices. In particular, Bernstein’s mode of theorising helped to

reformulate the initial problem of research practice in conditions of audit, and to guide its

empirical investigation. The problem was reformulated thus: What are the principles

regulating the most central practice of knowledge producing activity within the field(s) of

educational studies – the practice of creating and putting into circulation social scientific

texts, i.e., of scientific communicative practice? What are the modalities of its ‘realization’,

and what are its effects? Thus from a methodological point of view the theory implied a

focus on scientific texts (productions of researchers).

More specifically, in the context of the ‘Mathematics Education research’ study, journal

articles and conference papers were seen as instances/representations of the research activity

in the field under consideration. Despite the many criticisms directed to constructionism, and

'the textual turn' more specifically, and despite the new emphasis on more realist

epistemological approaches to knowledge in recent years, few would want to dispute the view

that to understand an intellectual field and its activities requires paying attention to the

processes by which textual products are created, stabilised and bounded. This problematic has

been developed most clearly in the field of the Social Studies of Science, which has asserted

the significance of studying scientific texts to understand science, and also extended the

model of text to describe it; especially to understand the boundary work accomplished with

and by texts, processes which serve to sustain social boundaries (Tsatsaroni & Cooper, 2001).

Therefore, by focusing on texts the authors of the study wanted to explore how the field

of mathematics education research and the subjectivity of its researchers are formed and

changed over time. Basic to this is the idea that to be able to understand how the

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consciousness of the educational researcher is formed a systematic description of the

organization of knowledge in the field is required.

At this point, a brief additional note on current theoretical concerns informing the study-

in- progress is in order.

IV. A brief note on current theoretical concerns

Bernstein’s theory helps us to focus on knowledge, and researchers’ relation to it

which gives us insights into changes in their professional identities. Description of changes in

knowledge is therefore a way into changes in the construction of identity.

Concerning the organisation of knowledge, we should note, first, that we are concerned

not only with the Greek case but also with a way of studying this problem more broadly, and

with reference to the whole field of educational studies. As a social field this is inevitably an

arena of struggle6 and as we have already mentioned, Ball (1998/2006) describes it as a field

whose fragmentation is not only evident today but also has been going on for too long.

Furthermore, Ball describes it as a field which currently has been ‘reincorporated’ into the

state. This remark we think is important, for it suggests that one of the fundamental

dimensions to consider in studying the field of educational studies is its changing relations to

the state (and/or supranational policy related agencies). The relation of educational studies to

the state (and supranational agencies) is varying across societies, but the global socio-

political context will play a role in the form this relation takes. Here the descriptions of the

transformations in this relation that Ball offers can help construct four ‘subject positions’7: 6 Thus for example, Educational Studies as a whole historically has been struggling to deal with a deep

contradiction resulting, on the one hand, from its practitioners’ commitment to the training of teachers and, on the other hand, from their need to position themselves and be recognized and valued within academia; though, one could show that up until the mid 1980s the general political climate in many democratic societies was such that scholars in educational studies had more room for maneuver (Goodson, 1999). Today, in contrast, despite the rhetoric of many politicians about the importance of education, the dominant policy discourse sees education first and foremost as a lever for economic growth and global competitiveness. The political interventions resulting from such understanding of education makes educational studies one of the most vulnerable areas within the general field of intellectual production. More generally, as a consequence of current economic, cultural, technological and social changes, political interventions are in fact reducing the significance of educational studies as a whole, especially as teacher education is redefined in instrumental terms as work-based training, a fact which de-legitimizes certain forms of knowledge (Beck & Young, 2005). The arena where struggle is fought today is therefore quite different.

7 Here we use the term ‘subject positions’; see work done previously on this by one of the present authors (e.g., Morgan, Tsatsaroni & Lerman, 2002). However, the use of the term ‘identity’ throughout the paper, and of the term ‘identifications’ in its title would call for an explicit discussion of our position. However, at this stage of research, we can only point to our general orientation to the issue. Disidentification as a practice in educational studies might mean: “leaving or giving up a place that is safe, that is ‘home’ – physically, emotionally, linguistically, epistemologically – for another place that is unknown and risky, that is not only emotionally but conceptually other; a place of discourse from which speaking and thinking are at best tentative, uncertain,

15

‘research scholarship’, ‘research expertise’, ‘educational engineering’, and ‘entrepreneurship’

(Ball, 1998/2006; see also previous section). The latter tends to be the predominant form

today, and its meaning, rests primarily on the proselytising, and in some cases the sale, of ‘technically correct answers’. The policy entrepreneur is committed to the application of certain technical solutions to organisations and contexts which are taken a priori to be in need of structural and/or cultural change. The entrepreneur’s interests, in terms of identity and career, are bound up directly and immediately, rather than once removed, as in the case of policy science and critical social science, with the success of their dissemination. We might pick out ‘the self-managing school’ as an example of one such focus of dissemination…(Ball, 1998/2006, p.61)

As an interpretative scheme of empirical data this may need reworking or supplementing,

by focusing on the organisation of knowledge through empirical research. Apart from the

internal structuring and organisation of the field, the conceptual means for which are given in

the previous section, we should take into account that Education as an academic subject and

as a field of research activity has comprised many and different sub-fields, in its historical

emergence and in its transformations through past decades. Situated in local, national and

international spaces, the influence each of this levels has exerted on the field varies,

knowledge always being coloured by the specific and changing political, cultural,

institutional and discursive circumstances in which it is produced. This implies that the

degree of internal unity is varying both across societies and in different periods. It also varies

as to the relation between the field and other fields of knowledge. We therefore need to

concentrate on ‘boundary’ work. And if the elaboration of this theoretical thesis and its

potential for guiding empirical investigations has been a lifelong project for Basil Bernstein,

the basic insight is present early on in his work. Having taken issue with the sociology of

education for being focusing on different approaches (or language games) – and arguing that

a socialisation into an approach being a socialisation into a sect as to its social base - he goes

on to state:

…[W]e need to explore the ambiguities and contradictions upon which our symbolic arrangements ultimately rest; for in these ambiguities are both the seeds of change and man’s creative acts. In order to do this, we must be able to show how the distribution of power and the principles of control shape the structure of these symbolic arrangements, how they enter into our experience as interpretative procedures and the conditions of their repetition and change.

(Bernstein, 1977, p. 171)

In aspiring to inform our work on changing forms of social relations within the field of

educational studies, we are concentrating on changes in symbolic structures. Boundary

unguaranteed” (Teresa de Lauretis, cited by Ball, 1998/2006, p.64). Identification, in contrast, points inter alia to compliance.

16

maintenance between the field of Education and other fields of knowledge within the wider

field of intellectual production, as well as between its sub-fields, are effects of changing

relations of power. By drawing on these ideas and concepts, however, we need also to reflect

on a double edged question: What does it mean to work from within a theoretical paradigm at

the time when the proliferation of available theoretical frames complicates the conditions of

the legitimation of knowledge; while, on the other hand, the dominant political discourse(s)

work so as to establish only few orthodoxies within the field?

V. Research in progress on changes in Greek educational research

practices and the identities of academic researchersWith the above theoretical concerns in mind, in order to move forward with the

current project we shall assess the usefulness of the analytical tool used in the Mathematics

Education Research study to re-describe a study carried out previously by Tsakiris in the

Greek context. This study is currently in the form of a research report (Tsakiris, 2005),

originally compiled in order to provide information to the Ministry of Education concerning

the directions of funded research projects, and PhD research in education. The study yielded

data that allows a sketch to be drawn of the education research field. This in terms of topics,

approaches, and methodologies used; as well as of the sub-fields of research which are given

priority in the process of bidding for the available funding. Among other things, potentially

this study gives us a first measure of where the government (and the E.U.) places its

educational research priorities.

i. Description of a completed project (Tsakiris, 2005) The project by Tsakiris8 was carried out at The Educational Research Centre of

Greece (ERCG), an official agency of the Ministry of Education, assisting the Government

on policy and carrying out related research. It was part of a wider research activity of the

Centre aiming to create records of the national education system, with reference to: the

functioning of schools (infrastructure, managing of material and human resources, relations

between school and its social environment); the activities of school life; the organization and

administration of the schooling institutions.

8 Despina Tsakiris, then researcher employed by the Educational Research Centre of Greece, was the scientific co-ordinator of the project and its principal investigator. Collaborators in the project were: Eleni Vantaraki, Iris Adamopoulou and Dr Emilia Banou, teachers seconded to the Centre.

17

The endeavour to record data on the education system was, in essence, a move to

modernize the processes of decision making in the formation and application of educational

policy. The aim of ERCG to create an electronic database of educational research, and to

create the basic conditions of research infrastructure capable of recording the research output

in Greece, in (the perceived) interests of facilitating research, should therefore be seen as part

of this modernizing project.

The project by Tsakiris started in 2001, and looked at research produced in fields

related to education in Greece from 1996 to 2001. The period coincides with the time

schedule of research activity done under the ‘Second Community Support Framework’ of the

E.U.

By implication, this project is limited as to its conception and purpose, its rationale

being quite different from our on-going study, aiming to elucidate aspects of the education

research practice in Greece. However, the decision to revisit this project and to use it as a

kind of pilot work towards designing a larger scale and more sociologically informed

research on current research practice in Greece, is, we believe, justified. In particular, we see

three important reasons which make the data collected worth revisiting with our own research

questions in mind. First, as already mentioned, this period coincides with the Second

Community Support Framework. During this period it is hypothesized that the production in

research, and education research in particular, will have increased compared to previous

years. If this is the case for many other European countries, member states of the Union, in

the Greek case there is another important factor which reinforces our assumption of an

increase in research productions during the said period. This relates to the consolidation of

changes occurred with the upgrading to university status of the Schools of Education for the

Training of Teachers that took place in the middle of 1980s. As had been the case in many

other countries of the world previously, their upgrading, institutionalization, progressive

development, and recognition as University Departments in the existing Greek Universities

has certainly been a facilitating factor in research productivity. We can also hypothesize that

these first two factors have re-inforced each other, amplifying their separate effects on the

advancements of particular kinds of research. A third independent factor which might have

affected both the quantity and the quality of research, or both the process and products of

research activity, is the socio-political context. Debates about the new mission of the

University as an institution, about the evaluation of the activities of academics, about

accountability, taking place around the world are likely to have an influence on academics’

research practice, even in cases like Greece where there has been a strong resistance towards

18

attempts by successive Governments to impose systems of quality control and quality

assurance. In any case, what is interesting is the spreading and gradual acceptance of the idea

that it is legitimate to expect academics like other professionals to be submitted to processes

and mechanisms of accountability. To the three reasons above we can add that currently there

is no available data on this topic in Greece; therefore making the most of this existing data

will facilitate further research9.

Collection of dataTo appreciate the value of the data of Tsakiris’s study, and also its possible

limitations, it is important to explain the procedures followed for its production. Data was

collected from all Greek universities, including the ‘new universities’, that is the former

Technological Education Institutions (in Greek, TEI), as well as all Research Centres which

have developed research activity relevant to education. Main sources for data collection were

the archives of the ‘Research Committees’ at Universities, TEI and Research Centres, the

Education Departments at Universities, as well as other University Departments some of the

activities of which were seen to be related to Education. Further information was sought

through the website of the National Centre for Documentation. The Research Committees of

Universities and Research Centres provided information classified by them as ‘research’.

University Departments furnished information related to Doctoral theses, both completed and

in progress. Missing information (or new data) was subsequently sought by electronically

administering a questionnaire addressed to research co-ordinators (about 300 people). Key

persons in each of the relevant institutions were also contacted. In total information was

sought from: 19 universities, 14 TEI, 18 Research Centres and 69 Education and related

Departments at universities.

Table 5 below shows the grid used with the items on which information was sought

for each piece of research:

Table 5. Mapping of Research on Educational Topics carried out by Greek Institutions of H.E. and Research

Centres, 1996-2001. Data collection Grid.

Agency University Higher Technological Education Institution(TEI)

Research Centre

DepartmentScientific Co-ordinator

9 It is important to mention here that, in the last few years, a number of Greek universities, on their own initiative, have started to record and publisise the research output of their academic staff.

19

TitleDuration1996-2001Funding source(s), if applicableAbstract (or longer summary of work)

Source: Tsakiris, 2005.

All Universities and TEI, as well as the Research Centres responded positively, except

the National Kapodistrian University of Athens. Also only 42 out of 69 University

Departments submitted data. In the latter case, the data were checked, and missing data were

filled in by drawing information from the National Centre of Documentation. It is important

to note here that many Departments of Education at the moment of data collection were still

not computerised; therefore it is likely that this data is not absolutely accurate. It is also

important to mention here that beyond the University Departments of Education,

Departments deemed relevant for the purpose of this research were mainly Departments that

traditionally are responsible for the training of secondary school teachers (such as University

Departments of Mathematics, Physics and Greek Language).

Data ProcessingThe project’s team of researchers applied a basic scheme for processing and

organising the data collected. In the first instance, data was checked so that only research that

was characterised as ‘research studies on an educational topic’ were included in the records.

To characterise a piece of data as ‘research studies on an educational topic’ two basic

criteria were used. First, the title related to any of the basic sectors of education: family (in its

relation to education), the education system, schooling institutions and lifelong learning, and

vocational training. Research that referred to the training of specialised categories of

professionals (e.g., training of a bank’s staff in the use of ICT) was excluded. Second, the

topic was recognised as falling within the thematic areas of study in education. Very

schematically, education was taken to refer to: the institutional aspects of education

(structures of education systems, including comparative and historical approaches); education

as social action (aims, methods, technologies, psychological processes); education as content

(programmes of study); and education as outcomes (Mialaret, 2005).

The procedure followed to apply these criteria was first to identify and record

research titles (a) during the period 1996-2001, and (b) research titles of work carried out in

20

university departments of education. For the rest of university departments and for research

centres, research titles were included and recorded using two more criteria, some times in

combination: the word ‘education’ to be in the title, and to have been funded by the Ministry

of Education and/or its agencies.

A first

classification of the data

yielded the following sub-

categories: ‘Research

programmes’, ‘doctoral

studies’ ‘research

programmes related to

training’, ‘doctoral studies

in progress’. This initial

processing of information

of research titles was

compiled into a research

report, which comprises

916 pieces of research in

total.

Table 6 shows that

for the period 1996-2001, a percentage of 85,8% appears to fall into the category ‘basic

research’, with 14,3% characterised, on the basis of the criteria used in this study, as

‘research related to training’. Here we should stress that from the 916 research titles, only 270

abstracts or longer summaries are available. The ratio between ‘research programmes’

(59.2%) and ‘research related to training’ (14.3%), given the context in Greece, as described

earlier, makes this finding ‘suspect’. It is therefore important to revisit the study, checking

especially its criteria of classification. The need to work on the data is thus evident, in order

to appreciate its worth and to judge whether the existing information (as described above) is

adequate in the endeavour to sketch a picture of the state of the education research field in

Greece.

Table 6. Classification of Research on an Educational Topic in Greece, 1996-2001

Counts Percents

Research Programmes

Doctoral Studies –

completed

Doctoral Studies – in Progress

542

179

64

59.2%

19.5%

7.0%

Total ‘Basic Research’ 785 85.8%

Research related to Training

131 14.3%

Total 916 100%

Of which, Studies having a Summary

270 29.5%

21

Source: Tsakiris, 2005, modified

22

ii. Re-visiting the data. Developing a methodology to study research

practicesIn revisiting the data in our on-going research project we seek to answer two central

and inter-related research questions. The first is formulated thus: What are the principles

constituting the boundaries of the field within which a topic is recognised as a legitimate

object of research in educational studies in the Greek context of academic research? The

second question seeks to identify different types or subject positions for the educational

researcher within the discourse organising the field.

Addressing these questions necessitates working in steps with the data at our disposal

in order to develop an appropriate research tool to assist our work. In what follows we shall

introduce and explain the rationale of its construction.

Initially, some basic questions are raised with which we seek to describe any

systematic differences between different (sub)categories of research10. In particular, the

initial questions include: Is most of the research produced in Departments of Education or in

Research Centres? Are there differences between data collected in the two respective places,

and are there differences between on the one hand doctoral research and on the other hand

‘research programmes’ and ‘research programmes related to training’, independently of the

location in which they are produced? Furthermore, are there differences between ‘doctoral

research’ and the sub-category ‘research programmes’ only; and ‘doctoral research’ and

‘research programmes’ on the one hand and ‘research related to training’ on the other?

With reference to such questions two general remarks are in order. First concerning

the doctoral studies. One can argue that from the point of view of educational academics, the

topic of the doctoral research supervised can be taken to be a strong indication of their

research interests and research orientations. However, to make this assumption stronger it

would be important to have information concerning whether the doctoral research identified

was done or is being done under scholarships or other funding or not; information which is

currently not available. Secondly, the two sub-categories ‘research programmes’ and

‘research related to training’ might be taken as a strong indication of the priorities of funding

agencies, therefore of supranational and national governmental authorities and organisations

10 Using the data at our disposal, we shall initially sketch a picture of educational research in Greece, according to geographical region, prefecture and institution. This could help to show the tendencies of research productions in the different institutions according to location, as well as the kind of research favoured (research programmes, programmes related to training, doctoral studies).

23

responsible for formulating research policies – And again a distinction between funded and

non-funded projects has to be made, especially for the former category.

Table 7 below is an example of research titles on the basis of which differences

among different sub-categories of research can be illustrated. In particular:

Table 7. Example of classification of research into basic sub-categories, based on research titles

A/A Sub-categories Institution Department Scientific coordinator

Title Duration

492 Research Programme

University of Patras

Pedagogical Depart. of Primary Education

(…) An investigation of xenophobia among Greek pupils, University, and Higher Education students. A social-psychological approach

1998-1999

306 Doctoral Thesis(completed)

University of Thessali

Pedagogical Depart. of Preschool Education

(…) Self-concept of adolescents and their mothers in families with a special educational needs person

1996-2000

13 Research programme related to Training

Aristotle U of Thessaloniki

Pedagogical Depart. of Primary Education

(…) Training of teachers and education management staff in environmentaleducation

2000-2001

Source: Drawn from Tsakiris (2005)(…) : Information omitted

Research title 492: It has been classified as ‘research programme’. Its title bears the word

‘investigation’. Furthermore the title mentions the disciplines that inform the work, here

‘social-psychological’ studies.

Research title 306: Given that it is an example of the category ‘completed doctoral theses’,

there is no question about its classification category; still, on the basis of its title, as with the

research title 492, it can be unambiguously classified as research. Furthermore, the title

24

allows a difference to be discerned between 492 and 306 research category, in that the latter

indicates a narrower research field as the object of study.

Research title 13: The title classifies it unambiguously as ‘research related to training’. The

professionals subject to training are identified, as well as the knowledge area constituting the

object of research/training content.

On the basis of generally recognised categories of research it is here inferred that the

first two are ‘basic research’, while the third belongs to the area of ‘applied research’.

The second step in preparation for data analysis was to construct broad thematic

categories of research by classifying the existing research programmes so as to be able

to sketch a rough picture of research produced. There are two aspects to this process. The

first is a simple and straightforward classification and description of research on the basis of

their title or their abstract. Thu, by working with the data, we have developed the categories

of research shown in Table 8a.

Table 8a. Thematic categories for classifying research

1. Policies on education (diachronic and synchronic analyses of educational policy, educational reforms, analysis of concrete educational policies)

2. Education as an institution and its relationship to other institutions (economy and the labour market, society, the state)

3. Assessment and evaluation in education (of the educational system, schools, pupils, educational resources and programmes of study, teachers and administrative staff)

4. Education and training of adults5. Education, social difference, social justice6. Programmes of study7. Pedagogy – and didactic methodology8. Educational research and research practices9. Education and New Technologies10. History of Education and of the teacher11. Education, in-service-training of teachers

Table 8b. Classification of research, according to thematic categories, as shown in Table 8a. Example by research title

Categoriesa/a Title of

Research1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11

591 Social reproduction and the reproduction of violence in schools.

(1) (v)

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Involvement of pupils in violent acts and school re-actions.

Predominant thematic category: (1)Additional thematic categories: (v)

Note here that further analysis of the data can be carried out by considering only one

thematic category, or by using a combination of categories. For example, categories (1) and

(4) taken together can provide an indication of how broadly a research community

understands education (as a research field) to be. - How this might change over time is also

an interesting question. Furthermore, those research programmes for which an abstract or

longer summary is available can be re-classified into the thematic categories (see table 8a), to

check reliability of the original procedure of classification by titles. An example is shown in

Table 8c below, where the same research as in Table 8b above is used.

Table 8c: Reclassification of research into thematic categories on the basis of abstracts or longer summaries.

Summary of Research, no. 591The emergence of violent incidents and their evaluation (perception?) by students and teachers points to the dominant value system of the Greek society, which defines and determines the particular expressions in the exercise of politics towards social cohesion and social development; as is the designing and application of educational policy. In the context of this study, fieldwork was conducted at the national level in order to record information on the current school reality in our country, and to explore empirically the theoretical issues that are relevant to the object of research.

Categoriesa/a Title of

research1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11

591 As above, Table 8b

(v) (1) (v)

Thematic categories yielded:

Predominant:

Education as an institution and its relation to other institutions (economy, society, the

state), thematic category (2).

Other categories:

26

Education, social difference, social justice, thematic category (5).

Policies on education, thematic category (1).

Second, a sociological content analysis of research for which there are abstracts or

longer summaries (270, in total) can be carried out. Using a combination of titles and

summaries, a classification of research can be undertaken on the basis of a distinction

between: commitment to a discipline or commitment to an (education) problem. This would

yield information regarding the kinds of commitment binding educational researchers in our

sample.

As an example we can use the research on Table 7, presented earlier. Even on the

basis of the title, for research no. 492 we can infer the commitment of the researcher to

certain disciplinary approaches. In this case, the commitment to an educational problem is

also apparent.

Consider also the examples in Table 8d, below.

Table 8d. Indications of researchers’ basic commitments. An example

Research No. Research Title Comments401 The pedagogy of the Foreigner:

Historical and philosophical approach

The approach to the topic of research is emphasised

83 Constructions of open-air games for children of preschool education

A pedagogical issue and the intention to cover a probable need for the teacher and/or the pupils is emphasised.

Therefore, in following the first two steps of our proposed methodology we seek to

approach our general research questions by numbers, thematic categories and certain

semiological means; expecting to be able to treat the following two empirical questions:

- What is promoted and/or recognised as legitimate research in the field(s) of educational

studies?

- What does the researcher consider important to mention in his/her research title or abstract

(or long summary)?

A third step in our developing methodology aims to elaborate on these questions using

the available data. At this stage we shall use the sample of research projects for which

abstracts or longer summaries are available. This requires a ‘textual’ analysis, and the use of

the research tool developed in the study on Mathematics Education Research (See Section III,

above; and, for the complete research tool, Tsatsaroni, et al, 2003, Appendix 1) is appropriate,

27

as it can facilitate a systematic approach to text. The main items comprising the research tool

are given in Table 9a below and a brief description of them follows.

Table 9a. Data elaboration for systematic description of educational research practices1. Theory: Implicit or explicit reference to theory. Dominant theories. 2. Research orientation: Privileging of the theoretical or of the empirical domain? How is theory used?3. The researcher(s) aim and the addressee(s) of the research.4. Ideological affiliations of the researcher.5. The pedagogical model promoted in the research.Source: Tsatsaroni, et al, 2003

Definitions of the items to be used at the third stage of the current research

1. Theory. Are there in the scientific texts any reference to theory or not? And is theory

explicit or implicit? Furthermore, which theories are dominant? And through this question,

do(es) the author(s) consider important to discuss any theoretical aspects of the object of

study in the research paper examined?

2. Research orientation. Here questions include: Which domain is privileged, the theoretical

or the empirical? if the former, is the research contributing to a debate or not? Is theory

simply used, is it discussed and modified, is it opposed? If it is an empirical project what is its

focus? and what is its methodology? (see Brown & Dowling, 1998).

3. What is the researcher(s) aim? In looking at the purpose of the research, we are also

concerned with identifying the addressee(s) of the research.

4. The ideological affiliations of the research; i.e., traditional-conservative, liberal-

progressive, populist ideology. (See Bernstein, 2000).

5. The pedagogical model promoted in the research project (i.e., competence and

performance models; see, Bernstein, 1990, 2000). This is particularly important, when

studying educational research practices. For supporting (implicitly or explicitly) a particular

organisation of school knowledge is in fact a strong indication of a researcher’s own relation

to knowledge. More specifically, the way educational knowledge is depicted within a

researcher’s report expresses the way he/she understands educational reality to be. In this

sense, although educational knowledge and educational reality are not identical, we would

argue that one points to the other in ways that makes them inseparable. With reference to this

item, then, the question is what kind of researcher’s identity does the educational reality, as

expressed in the representation of educational knowledge within a research report, point to?

More simply, depending on how a researcher understands the educational reality that he or

she is studying, he or she promotes a particular kind of pedagogical model, and this, in turn,

points to a particular kind of identity for the researcher concerned. This way of thinking about

28

this particular item of the research tool has made us modify/simplify it compared to how it

was used in the ‘Mathematics Education Research’ project (see, Tsatsaroni, et al, 2003,

Section on ‘Methodology’ and Appendix 1). This makes it easier to develop indicators,

helping us to raise some facilitating questions, as shown in Table 9b.

Table 9b. Facilitating questions for developing indicators for item 5, ‘The pedagogical model promoted in

the research project’ (Table, 9a) of the research tool for studying educational research practice.

- Does the research abstract (or longer summary) talk about the educational knowledge and how?

- Does the researcher talk about the institutional aspects of education and how?

- Does the researcher talk about the subjects involved in the educational process (teacher-student and student-

student relations), and how?

VI. Discussion and conclusions so far. An investigation into research practices and into academic identities as a topic of

research seems to surprise no one in the current socio-political circumstances. We first make

a couple of methodological remarks with theoretical corollaries. Then, we shall conclude by

raising a question, which is of great concern to us.

Regarding the methodology, the first point we would like to make is that the main

information available for analysis in the on-going research study, namely research title and

summary of each research project, is certainly more manageable to work on; and as has been

shown in the preceding section, there is vital information conveyed by a title or an abstract

that can be of great use in research on research. So focusing on abstracts and titles might not

be as great a limitation as first seems.

Second, within the methodological approach of the on-going research the main steps

of which were presented in this paper, abstracts or longer summaries are conceived of as

‘scientific texts’ which do not simply record and describe a research procedure and its results

but express the intentionality of the author(s). With this we mean that the text incorporates a

‘pedagogical’ approach or stance (a representation) that the author is adopting in order to help

the reader to understand the research carried out/completed. At the same time through this

(re)presentation the author attempts to convince the receiver/reader that the work at issue is

done according to the scientific norms of the community to which it is addressed. We would

be more able to address these aspects of the text in our study in progress than it was possible

29

in the study by Tsatsaroni, et al. (2003), where full reports had to be handled. Furthermore, it

is when the space is limited that the researcher is obliged to make strict choices on what is to

include in his/her text.

Related to the two methodological points above, there is an advancement in the

approach proposed here, in that in our study in progress we are concerned not only about

which theory is more able to support and guide research on research practice (a concern

preoccupying the research team in the former study), but also what kind of theoretical or

methodological issues are we here able to raise, if not completely resolve. In particular, the

theoretical analysis supporting our methodological stance has been difficult to develop in full

in the present paper but what has been discussed thus far points to questions of ‘subjectivity’

as a way of working on education academics’ professional identities. Involvement with

research presupposes ‘recognition’ and ‘realisation’ rules (Bernstein, 2000) for the relevant

practice. By identifying the criteria organising the research we can sketch if not the various

types of researchers’ identity, at least some plausible images of the predominant forms. In

this respect the ultimate aim of our on-going project is to create a typology of researchers’

identities by elaborating on theoretical issues (see note 7, above); and by engaging in an

empirical investigation within the Greek context, which perhaps would be also relevant or

useful for research in other social (national) contexts.

From the point of view of both theory and methodology, the main issue is with the

status of the ‘scientific text’ (in the relevant bibliography identified as issues of

representation and the status of representations); what it means to say that texts represent

research activity in a given field and that they shape the consciousness of the researcher.

Because this is a huge and complex problem, suffice it here to make a couple of remarks

only. First, if saying that representations are not simply representations of a pre-existing

reality is currently a rather commonsensical remark to make, to talk about representations as

pure constructions we see as equally problematic. Second, representations are here conceived

of as descriptions where social reality is constituted, and as speech acts where a speaker in

saying something does something. Intentionality presupposes a receiver to whom the speaker

has a concern to show something and/or convince about something and it is done in socially

organised practices of research recognised as legitimate in a given field.

With the above in mind, a question arises, which comes from our engagement with

the two research studies revisited here: To what extent or under what conditions studies like

these, aiming to systematically describe research activities, are contributing to the

advancement of knowledge in the field rather than a strengthening of an already tendency for

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control and social regulation? The questions here multiply. The researchers’ reflection on

their own practices 10-15 years ago, though encouraged by many and ideologically divergent

kinds of reasoning, was not a legitimate object of inquiry within a field of study. To attempt

this was to introduce a ‘split’ within (the) Subject(ivity). Now as the literature referred to in

this paper indicates, it is a growing area of research. So on the one hand we have the auditing

agencies and governmental bodies that aim to record and evaluate the

productivity/performativity of different fields (and their impacts on fields of practice,

including policy formation and implementation); and on the other hand, we have the

researchers who construct ‘research practice’ as a particular object or even field of study. Is

there a line separating the two? and with this, the deeper epistemological/sociological

question: what are the conditions of emergence of research activity as an object of study, this

‘positivity’ in Foucault’s terms (1991)?

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