ABSTRACT
Ideas relating to educational policy and practice are underpinned by recourse to foundational disciplines, particularly philosophy and the social sciences. Educational research embeds itself in a wide variety of theoretical discourses, using them to explore issues such as professional and cultural identities, forms of educational management, changing work practices and priorities. They also form the basis for numerous debates relating to the user experience, including, for example, differential attainment and achievement, access and inclusion, and the relationship between culture and learning. Although education researchers have drawn on the work of a wide diversity of theorists, a number of these have been of particular signifi cance to education. While the likes of Karl Marx, Antonio Gramsci, John Dewey and Paulo Freire infl uenced previous generations of educational theorists, much of the more contemporary theory building has revolved around a quartet of well-known and much-debated thinkers – Jacques Derrida, Pierre Bourdieu, Michel Foucault and Jürgen Habermas.
