ABSTRACT
In this chapter I intend to reflect upon my practice as an educational researcher and theorist and, in more general terms, consider the current state of educational studies. In doing so I shall allow myself to be playful and perhaps at times outrageous. I am not attempting to be definitive. What I offer here is coming close to an approximation of something I might hope to say more clearly in the future. The spirit of what I am attempting, and some of the substance I wish to argue, are conveyed rather effectively in the following quotation from Michel Foucault:
My proposition, then, my ‘game opening’ here, is that educational studies is in a sorry state and in danger of becoming sorrier. That is to say, the weak grammars of educational studies, those concepts, relations and procedures upon which it rests, are becoming weaker (Bernstein, 1996). In Bernsteinian terms, the serial segmented structures, those differentiating rituals which distinguish us from each other and from other fields of knowledge, are becoming more detached and insulated from one another. As Basil Bernstein might put it, the invisible light that shines wanly within the knowledge structures of educational studies is in danger of being snuffed out entirely.
