ABSTRACT
This volume is designed to encourage researchers in education to reflect upon ‘the critical intent of the wider research project’ and to turn ‘a reflexive lens upon their experience as researchers’.1 There are a number of reasons why this should be done. The first is that the existing literature of reflexivity in educational research is not extensive, although Burgess (1984, 1985, 1989), Halpin and Troyna (1994) and Walford (1994) are important examples of the genre. The neglect of reflexivity is not surprising given the prevailing culture of educational research internationally which continues to cling to nineteenth century positivist notions of what it is to be ‘scientific’, ‘objective’, ‘valid’ and ‘robust’. As Troyna argued:
Technicist conceptions of research, which focus purely and simply on ‘how to do’ empirical projects, continue to dominate the research literature…in their determination to lay bare the allegedly logical and sequential phases of the conception, execution and dissemination of social research, these interpretations of the activity help to sanction and reproduce the myth of objectivity. (Troyna, 1994, p. 5)
There is therefore a need for more researchers to write accounts which show the limitations of technicism, the ideological and historical struggles behind ‘logic’ and ‘sequence’ and the problematics of objectivity. Educational research must abandon pretensions to be a recontextualized form of natural science by recognizing that it is preeminently a humane study with an humane intent. As such it cannot, with integrity, develop a research culture which is not in itself humane i.e. participative, methodologically catholic, critically reflexive, culturally sensitive and intent upon the enhancement of the potentiality and dignity of persons.2 Educational research is not an instrument for more efficient human engineering. It is, at its best, a collaborative and humane enterprise to assist the fulfilment of the creative potential of people and of societies. Research students in education must avoid coming to the view that there are ‘soft’ humane considerations in empirical enquiry and ‘hard’ methodological and analytical procedures and that the latter constitutes the real business. The
requirements for humane inquiry are intellectually, personally and morally demanding but not yet fully documented or codified in the research manuals. That is why the contributions to this volume provide a useful resource for those reflecting upon the nature of humane and critical research in education.
