ABSTRACT
This chapter outlines a genealogy of contemporary practice in RE based on a spatial analysis across time, highlighting some of the key dynamics and assumptions that inform it. Together with chapter one, these chapters provide a diagnosis of the contemporary plausibility crisis in RE, characterised as one of indifference. This indifference is accounted for in this chapter in terms of an emphasis on neutrality, and the pursuit of practices that distance the inquirer from matters of concern, which is presented in abstract, generalised, and non-affecting terms. This calls for a rethinking that, as educational, leads out in new directions. A case study that takes as its focus an examination paper, analyses how this theoretical orientation ‘touches down’, and is held in place, in actual practices associated with the international qualifications economy.
