ABSTRACT
In ground breaking work, Kincheloe identified the French concept of ‘bricolage’ as a philosophical approach to learning, knowledge and research and a means by which the various features of human life and scholarship impact on knowing, the features of history, economics and the like. Drawing on the work of Levi- Strauss (1966) and Denzin and Lincoln (2000/2017), Kincheloe argued for the conception of teacher and researcher as ‘bricoleur’ such that diverse methodologies and understandings are brought together in the act of inquiry and research. He recognised that the complexity of the bricolage required knowing well a range of knowledge disciplines and that ‘Any social, cultural, psychological, or pedagogical object of inquiry is inseparable from its context, the language used to describe it, its historical situatedness in a larger ongoing process and the socially and culturally constructed interpretations of its meaning(s) as an entity in the world’ (Kincheloe, 2011). This is no easy task and will probably require teams of practitioners bringing to bear their combined disciplinary know-how, philosophies and experience on difficult problems and ideas. One life-time is not enough. A critique of both quantitative and qualitative methods in the social sciences and humanities would reveal issues of bias, accuracy, consistency and authentication as well as the lack of relationship between the objective and subjective that raise many troubling issues regarding the stability and trustworthiness of educational research. In this way, Kincheloe’s commitment to establishing a new comprehensive, cultural, respectful, inclusive approach of knowing, of rigorous interpretation of experience and of theorising through the bricolage opened up a new vision of learning and schooling for teachers and students alike. Advocating the practice of research bricolage has the advantage that it is highly respectful of community culture and values. However it has the disadvantage of not yet having gained acceptance as a recognised research methodology and the validity of its outcomes. There is extensive debate in qualitative research generally regarding new methodologies and like all innovation, new approaches go through a process of trial, documentation, discussion and refinement over a period of time before being accepted into the pantheon. Given that the proposal for discursive knowledge and research bricolage is being advanced for those communities that work within mainstream environments such as regular schooling, then ways must be found of data gathering and theorising of findings that relate directly to systemic operation and enhancement.
