ABSTRACT
The extract below offers a critique of the notion of capacity building in educational theory. Broadly speaking, the term refers to a perceived need to engender a greater understanding of the role of theory in educational research, including in the presentation of research findings (Biesta et al., 2011). The extract reflects the author’s enduring fascination with the practice of educational research, and the cognitive and imaginative possibilities of language. It is driven by a desire for lightness rather than gravitas, and a resistance to modes of academic exchange that value expositions of knowledge over demonstrations of thoughtfulness. Italo Calvino (1988: 8) suggests that it is only by engaging with the ‘lightness of thoughtfulness’ that we are able to perceive ‘all that is minute, light and mobile’. The extract below is an attempt to bring this lightness of thoughtfulness to bear on the notion of capacity building in educational theory. As Biesta et al. (2011) point out, the methods and methodologies of research have received rather more attention in recent years than has the quality of theorising. This is a significant gap because ‘good research depends on a combination of high quality techniques and high quality theorising’ (ibid.: 226). Biesta et al. suggest that there is a key role for theory in ‘deepening and broadening understandings of “everyday” interpretations’ and in ‘exposing how hidden power structures influence and distort such interpretations and experiences’ (ibid.). What happens when we subject calls for capacity building in educational theory to the same treatment? In the ensuing extract this is achieved by drawing attention to how we use language, and by considering the obverse of capacity, namely, incapacity, construed as a form of attentive non-doing. Is there a role for the latter in educational research? It is worth recalling the etymology of theory, which is derived from the Greek θεωρία, meaning contemplation, speculation, or the act of looking.
