"Bringing together a unique collection of 18 insightful and innovative internationally focused articles, Educational Research Practice in Southern Contexts offers reflections, case studies, and critically, research methods and processes designed to decentre, reframe, and reimagine educational research in ways that question existing approaches and operationalise the tenets of decolonising theory. This anthology represents a valuable teaching resource with which to challenge the conventional canons of educational research theory and practice. It provides readers with the chance to read high quality examples of research that critique current ways of doing research and to reflect on how research methods can contribute to the project of decolonising knowledge production in and about education in, for example, Africa, South Asia, Asia and Latin America. It grapples with everyday dilemmas and tricky ethical questions about protection, consent, voice, cultural sensitivity and validation, by engaging with real-world situations and increasing the potential for innovation and new collaborations. Educational Research Practice in Southern Contexts will be essential reading for anyone teaching educational research methods and will encourage novice and experienced researchers to rethink their research approaches, disentangle the local and global, and challenge those research rituals, codes and field work practices which are often unproblematically assumed to be universally relevant"--

Bringing together a unique collection of 18 insightful and innovative internationally focused articles, Educational Research Practice in Southern Contexts offers reflections, case studies, and critically, research methods and processes which decentre, reframe, and reimagine conventional educational research strategies and operationalise the tenets of decolonising theory. This anthology represents a valuable teaching resource. It provides readers with the chance to read high quality examples of research that critique current ways of doing research and to reflect on how research methods can contribute to the project of decolonising knowledge production in and about education in, for example, Africa, South Asia, Asia, and Latin America. It grapples with everyday dilemmas and tricky ethical questions about protection, consent, voice, cultural sensitivity, and validation, by engaging with real-world situations and increasing the potential for innovation and new collaborations. Educational Research Practice in Southern Contexts will be essential reading for anyone teaching educational research methods and will encourage novice and experienced researchers to rethink their research approaches, disentangle the local and global, and challenge those research rituals, codes, and fieldwork practices which are often unproblematically assumed to be universally relevant.

Engaging in Educational Research-Practice Partnerships guides academic researchers into forming mutually respectful, collaborative, and scalable partnerships with school practitioners. Despite robust theoretical and conceptual planning, research on learning is often removed from real settings and generates findings with limited practical relevance, yielding frustration for K-12 stakeholders. This book provides invaluable resources to researchers seeking to work with practitioners as they solve problems and improve outcomes while answering fundamental questions about who gets to generate knowledge, from where, to whom, and in what contexts. A range of illustrative case studies and strategies explores how to apply appropriate theories and methodologies, negotiate agendas that ensure mutually beneficial goals, determine the role of pracademics, establish institutional supports, policies, and procedures that amplify impact and sustainability, and much more.

Peter Freebody explains the complexities of educational research and demonstrates the importance of situating the resulting knowledge within cultural, linguistic and sociological contexts.

This book examines the conduct and purposes of educational research. It looks at values of researchers, at whose interests are served by the research, and the inclusion or exclusion of practitioners and subjects of research. It asks if educational research should be explicitly committed to promoting equality and inclusion, and whether that requires research to be more aware of the cultural and global contexts of research questions. It explores the ethical challenges encountered in the conduct of research and the potential ethical and social justice constraints imposed by comparative research rankings. Next, it discusses the research funding aspects of the above issues both philosophically and historically, thus examining the changing sources, patterns, and effects of educational research funding over time. Since the conduct of most educational research increasingly requires institutional and financial support, the question is whether funding shapes the content of research, and what counts as research. The book discusses if funding is a factor in the shift of efforts of researchers from pure or basic research to more applied research, and if it encourages the development of large research teams, to the detriment of individual scholars. It looks at the ownership of the content, results, and data of publicly funded research. Finally, it tries to establish whether scholars solicit funding to support research projects, or generate research projects to attract funding. This publication, as well as the ones that are mentioned in the preliminary pages of this work, were realized by the Research Community Philosophy and History of the Discipline of Education: Purposes, Projects, and Practices of Educational Research.

EDUCATIONAL RESEARCH “I wrote the book for students who are learning how to be consumers of research, as well as for those who will be planning their own research project. To be a successful researcher you need a variety of skills. You need to become a critical reader of published work, to learn about research methods and design – and to be able to put what you learn to use.” Dr. Ken Springer, Southern Methodist University Clearly organized, well-written, and user-friendly, this text provides a comprehensive look at quantitative, qualitative, and mixed-method approaches to research. The first six chapters introduce educational research methods, the second six chapters focus on quantitative design and analysis, while the final six chapters cover qualitative, mixed-methods, and applied research. The comprehensive approach of this textbook is supplemented by extensive coverage of topics such as research ethics, program evaluation, and statistical analysis. Several characteristics provide students with a meaningful context for the material: Each chapter features three “Spotlight on Research” sections consisting of a lengthy excerpt from a recently published study. Discussions of research studies throughout the text provide additional context for the material. Each chapter helps students apply newly acquired knowledge through features such as end-of-chapter exercises as well as the section, “Applications: A guide for the beginning researcher.” The book’s companion website provides both students and instructors with additional resources, including a Study Guide, a Resource Guide (including links to full-text articles), and an Instructor’s Manual and Test Bank.

How do we get at the meanings of everyday (and not so everyday) objects, and how might these meanings enrich educational research? The study of objects is well established in fields such as archaeology, art history, communications, fine arts, museum studies, and sociology—but is still developing in education. Object Medleys: Interpretive Possibilities for Educational Research brings together 37 educational researchers from wide-ranging contexts and multiple knowledge fields to a dialogic space in which subjects and objects, living and nonliving, entangle as medleys to open up understandings of connections made with, between, and through objects. Object Medleys offers diverse, innovative modes and lenses for representing, interpreting, and theorising object studies. The book is distinctive within scholarship on object inquiry in that much of the research has been conducted within Southern African educational contexts. This is complemented by contributions from scholars based in Canada and the United Kingdom. The original research represented in each peer-reviewed chapter expands academic conversations about what counts as data and analysis in educational research. Overall, Object Medleys illuminates the applied and theoretical usefulness of objects in response to pressing educational and societal questions. “Object Medleys is a rich and fascinating exploration of new possibilities, with potential for research, teaching, and learning that seems almost unlimited. This book is a rich assembly of affordances for exploring and widening the role of objects in educational research. It relocates attention from language and text towards embodied and material storytelling practices where new and marginalised ways of expression can find their ways into classrooms, thereby opening completely new avenues of teaching and learning.” – Kenneth Mølbjerg Jørgensen, Professor, Aalborg University, Denmark “In a time when materiality is being brought at the centre of critical inquiry in the social sciences and humanities, this edited collection offers unique insights into the relationship between objects, subjectivities, and learning. Beautifully written and cogently argued, the book breaks new ground by casting a critical spotlight on artefacts that might appear mundane at first sight but, on closer inspection, reveal complex patterns of educational potential.” – Tommaso M. Milani, Associate Professor, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa

Research for Educational Change presents ways in which educational research can fulfil its commitments to educational practice. Focussing its discussion within the context of mathematics education, it argues that while research-generated insights can have beneficial effects on learning and teaching, the question of how these effects are to be generated and sustained is far from evident. The question of how to turn research into educational improvement is discussed here in the context of learning and teaching hindered by poverty and social injustice. In the first part of the book, four teams of researchers use different methodologies while analysing the same corpus of data, collected in a South African mathematics classroom. In the second part, each of these teams makes a specific proposal about what can be done and how so that its research-generated insights have a tangible, beneficial impact on what is happening in mathematical classrooms. Combining two discourses – that of researchers speaking to one another, and that of researchers communicating their insights to those responsible for educational practice – the book deals with the perenial question of communication between those who study educational processes and those who are directly responsible for teacher education, educational research and classroom practices. This book will be key reading for postgraduates, researchers and academics in education and particularly in the areas of mathematics education, education research, teacher education and classroom practice. It will also appeal to teacher educators, practitioners and undergraduate students interested in educational research.

This collection addresses concepts and theories of change, contexts and functions of reform discourses, and fields of change in educational research. It examines a wide variety of issues such as girls’ education in France, educational neuroscience, the professionalization in Child Protection, and mathematics discourses. It pays attention to the pervasiveness of crisis rhetoric in American Education Research, to the current university climate, and to perspectives for teacher education. The volume presents in-depth studies that integrate the perspective of history and philosophy of education. Educational research has been typically carried out within a discourse of change: changing educational practice, changing policy, or changing the world. Sometimes these expectations have been grand, as in claims of emancipation; sometimes they have been more modest, as in research as a support for specific reforms. This book explores the answers to such questions as: Are these expectations justified? How have these discourses of change themselves changed over time? What have researchers meant by change, and related concepts such as reform, improvement, innovation, progress and the new? Does this teleological and hopeful discourse itself reflect a particular historical and national/cultural point of view? Is it over promising for educational research to claim to solve social problems, and are these properly understood as educational problems? In doing so, it challenges prevailing ideas about the application of philosophy and history of education, and demonstrates the relevance of philosophical and historical approaches for the practice and theory of education and for educational research. This publication, as well as the ones that are mentioned in the preliminary pages of this work, were realized by the Research Community (FWO Vlaanderen / Research Foundation Flanders, Belgium) Philosophy and History of the Discipline of Education: Faces and Spaces of Educational Research.