This article was downloaded by: On: 21 April 2011 Access details: Access Details: Free Access Publisher

Routledge Informa Ltd Registered in England and Wales Registered Number: 1072954 Registered office: Mortimer House, 3741 Mortimer Street, London W1T 3JH, UK

Paedagogica Historica

Publication details, including instructions for authors and subscription information: http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/title~content=t713441262

A method has been found? On educational research and its methodological preoccupations
Paul Smeyersab; Marc Depaepeb a Faculty of Psychology and Educational Sciences, Ghent University, Gent, Belgium b Faculty of Psychology and Educational Sciences, K.U. Leuven, Belgium

To cite this Article Smeyers, Paul and Depaepe, Marc(2008) 'A method has been found? On educational research and its

methodological preoccupations', Paedagogica Historica, 44: 6, 625 633 To link to this Article: DOI: 10.1080/00309230802486069 URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00309230802486069

PLEASE SCROLL DOWN FOR ARTICLE

Full terms and conditions of use: http://www.informaworld.com/terms-and-conditions-of-access.pdf This article may be used for research, teaching and private study purposes. Any substantial or systematic reproduction, re-distribution, re-selling, loan or sub-licensing, systematic supply or distribution in any form to anyone is expressly forbidden. The publisher does not give any warranty express or implied or make any representation that the contents will be complete or accurate or up to date. The accuracy of any instructions, formulae and drug doses should be independently verified with primary sources. The publisher shall not be liable for any loss, actions, claims, proceedings, demand or costs or damages whatsoever or howsoever caused arising directly or indirectly in connection with or arising out of the use of this material.

Paedagogica Historica Vol. 44, No. 6, December 2008, 625633

Introduction A method has been found? On educational research and its methodological preoccupations
Paul Smeyersab* and Marc Depaepeb
a Faculty of Psychology and Educational Sciences, Ghent University, Gent, Belgium; bFaculty of Psychology and Educational Sciences, K.U. Leuven, Belgium
Paulus.Smeyers@UGent.be PaulSmeyers 0 6000002008 44 2008 & final Original Article 0030-9230 Francis Ltd Paedagogica Historica 10.1080/00309230802486069 (ReceivedFrancisversion CPDH_A_348774.sgm received ) Taylor and;(print)/1477-674X (online)

The focus on method has been central in many historiographical essays. There is indeed no shortage of papers which offer theoretical, methodological and historiographical reflections about the nature or identity of History of Education an observation which can also be made concerning the Discipline of Education in general, but even about one of its subdisciplines, i.e. Philosophy of Education. This set of papers is not just another issue on this topic. The authors address somewhat from the outside a range of themes central to philosophical reflections on education. Thus it can be seen as parallel to the issue regarding the role of history of education for philosophy of education1 and more generally for the study of education which has been published earlier. Both publications are the result of intense collaboration within the context of the research community Philosophy and history of the discipline of education: Evaluation and evolution of the criteria for educational research established in 1999 by the Research Foundation Flanders, Belgium (Fonds voor Wetenschappelijk Onderzoek Vlaanderen).2 From the beginning, the aim of the network has been to combine research concerning the history and nature of the discipline with the science of education. The scope of this work also takes into account clarification, evaluation and the justification of the different modes and paradigms of educational research. Since 2000, the research community has convened annually in Leuven and has discussed various topics such as: the use of particular research methodologies, methods or techniques within the educational context (and their pros and cons), the methodological aspects of qualitative research relevant to education, the implications of ICT for educational research, the justification of particular positions within philosophy and history of education vis--vis other (for instance empirical) research in this field, the
*Corresponding author. Email: Paulus.Smeyers@UGent.be 1 Guest Editors Marc Depaepe and Paul Smeyers, Refuge in Theory, Educational Philosophy and Theory 39, no. 1 (2007). 2 Among others the following colleagues from 12 centres worldwide and three Belgian units have participated: W. Van Haaften (Nijmegen, The Netherlands); J. Dekker (Groningen, The Netherlands); J. Marshall (Auckland, New Zealand); N. Burbules (Urbana-Champaign, Illinois, USA); D. Labaree (Stanford, California, USA); P. Standish (Institute of Education, London, UK); R. Smith (Durham, UK); D. Bridges (Von Hgel Institute, St Edmunds College, Cambridge and University of East Anglia, UK); M. Peters (Urbana-Chapaign, Illinois, USA and Glasgow, UK); T.S. Popkewitz (Madison, Wisconsin, USA); L. Fendler (Michigan State, USA); L. Stone (North Carolina, Chapel Hill, USA); E. Keiner (Ruhr-Universitt, Bochum, Germany), D. Trhler (Zrich, Switzerland); S. Cuypers, M. Depaepe, J. Masschelein, S. Ramaekers, M. Simons, P. Smeyers, and A. Van Gorp, (Leuven, Belgium); F. Simon and P. Smeyers (Ghent, Belgium); J.P. Van Bendegem (Brussels, Belgium).
ISSN 0030-9230 print/ISSN 1477-674X online 2008 Stichting Paedagogica Historica DOI: 10.1080/00309230802486069 http://www.informaworld.com

Downloaded At: 02:51 21 April 2011

626

P. Smeyers and M. Depaepe

relation of philosophy and history of education to pure philosophy, to pure history, literature, aesthetics, and other relevant areas such as economics, sociology, and psychology, the justification of educational research within society at large and, finally, the curricular history of educational science as an academic discipline. The academics involved in this network share the belief that there is a place within the discipline of education for so-called foundationalist approaches. This is not, however, to answer a need for a (new) foundation, but to systematically study a particular area from a discipline-oriented stance. This resulted in a number of books. The essays published in 2003 under the title Beyond Empiricism: On Criteria for Educational Research bear witness to the belief that educational theory cannot help but go beyond empirical educational research to provide a real understanding of education as a human practice. Educational research is discussed respectively as a social discourse, as a discursive practice, in relation to epistemological issues, and in the light of questions of ethics. In the chapters published in the 2006 book, Educational Research: Why What Works Doesnt Work, attention is given to an understanding of how particular elements clearly worked in the past. Then the question is raised over whether something similar may be said concerning what we experience regarding what works now. Evidently, in both historical contexts, attention is focused on factors that are to be held responsible for the fact that something did not work. This leads to observations that go beyond a strictly meansend schema, and prompt us to take into account certain conditions or constraints, which operate on and are highly significant to our understanding of what is going on. Finally, what is possibly changing and what we need to do in the field of education (be it practice, theory or research) is highlighted. This refers to what surpasses the rather simple cause and effect rhetoric and thus transgresses the picture of performativity that keeps much of the talk about education captive. The collection was aimed primarily at educational research itself, in its many manifestations, and the issues were approached from a historical and philosophical stance. In Educational Research: Networks and Technologies, published in 2007, the way in which knowledge and understanding have undergone changes due to recent developments in ICT is discussed. Furthermore, the roles of the researcher and theoretician in the field of education are discussed. Finally attention is given to some more detailed examples of particular kinds of technologies relevant to education. There are two further collections which address these issues: Educational Research: The Educationalisation of Social Problems and Proofs, Arguments, and Other Reasonings: The Language of Education, which are respectively to be published in 2008 and 2009.3 The articles in this special issue, Focusing on Method, draw attention, as indicated, to a number of problems which have occupied philosophers of education we think relevant for History of Education and more generally for the Discipline of Education. Wilfred Carr observed that research always conveys a commitment to philosophical beliefs even if this is unintended and even though it remains implicit and unacknowledged. He claims that therefore researchers cannot evade the responsibility for critically examining and justifying the philosophical ideas that their enquiries incorporate. For him it follows, therefore, that philosophical reflection and argumentation are central features of the methods and procedures of educational research.4 Though the importance of this cannot be
3All books are edited by Paul Smeyers and Marc Depaepe. Except for the first book, which is published by Leuven University Press (Leuven), all others are published by Springer (Dordrecht). Some of the elements in this introduction rely on more elaborated arguments developed by Depaepe and/or Smeyers either in the introduction or in particular chapters of the mentioned books. 4Quoted in D. Bridges and R. Smith, Philosophy, methodology and educational research: Introduction, Journal of Philosophy of Education 40 (2006): 131.

Downloaded At: 02:51 21 April 2011

Paedagogica Historica

627

underestimated, clearly, there remain many routes that can be taken. As Ludwig Wittgenstein famously writes in his Philosophical Investigations5:
we now demonstrate a method, by examples; and the series of examples can be broken off. Problems are solved (difficulties eliminated), not a single problem. There is not a philosophical method, though there are indeed methods, like different therapies.

Taking us into the direction of a methodological pluralism clearly has a number of advantages. Thus Peter Winch6 will argue in this legacy that social science has taken the wrong turn. Aspiring to be an empirical study, it exemplifies what is characteristic of a positivist approach. It should rather engage itself with understanding human practices and not so much with predictions of social behaviour, for the central concepts that belong to our understanding of social life are, according to him, incompatible with the concepts central to the activity of scientific prediction. In order to argue this Winch develops a particular stance not only concerning the nature of philosophy and social science, but also about human nature. The attack that Winch launches in the opening paragraph of the Idea of a Social Science is as well directed against a particular conception of philosophy as of social science itself. Any worthwhile study of society, he argues, must be philosophical in character and any worthwhile philosophy must be concerned with the nature of human society. This bold claim has two targets. The first is what he labels the underlabourer conception of philosophy, which holds that philosophy cannot contribute any positive understanding of the world on its own account: here philosophy is seen as a technique in the course of essentially nonphilosophical investigations. The second is a conception of sociology and of the social studies generally which argues that social life should be explained not by the notions of those who participate in it, but by underlying causes of which the agents themselves are not consciously aware. Philosophy, according to Winch, is not only concerned with eliminating linguistic confusions; and by no means is genuine new knowledge only acquired by scientists by experimental and observational techniques. The philosopher is concerned with the nature of reality as such and in general and thus deals with the question What is real? The philosopher reminds her audience of the way in which particular concepts are used and thus offers an elucidation of a particular concept. Invoking Wittgenstein, Winch draws attention to the fact that one cannot make a sharp distinction between the world and the language in which we try to describe the world, and argues that it is therefore wrong to say that the problems of philosophy arise out of language rather than out of the world: Because in discussing language philosophically we are in fact discussing what counts as belonging to the world. Our idea of what belongs to the realm of reality is given for us in the language that we use. The concepts we have settle for us the form of the experience we have of the world.7 Being an example of a social science, the discipline of education or the study of the educational phenomena may profit from the turn Wittgenstein and Winch would like us to take. Importantly, however, this is not the only option we have. And typically, philosophy and philosophy of education have devoted considerable time, energy and argument in dealing with the stance educational researchers and scholars of the educational field should embrace in order to study education and all that goes with it. There is critical theory, phenomenology,
5L. Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations/Philosophische Untersuchungen, trans. G.E.M. Anscombe (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1953), 133. 6P. Winch, The Idea of a Social Science and its Relation to Philosophy (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1958). 7Ibid., 15.

Downloaded At: 02:51 21 April 2011

628

P. Smeyers and M. Depaepe

conceptual analysis, existentialism, Marxism, rationalism, and so on and so forth, to choose from, or so it seems; as there is discourse analysis, ethnomethodology, action research, participatory observation, in-depth interviews, again, just to name a few in the area of socalled qualitative empirical research. There is even a whole strand of literature that deals explicitly with the issue of whether science should mean more than systematic knowledge embracing the modern connotation of empiricism and experimentalism or aspire to be something along the lines indicated by the German Geisteswissenschaften, sometimes translated as the humanities of the humanistic study of culture. Philosophy seems to supply the central arguments thus exposing the embeddedness of any one point of view in more far-reaching sets of assumptions. Thus it can enable us better to understand what might be at stake in any particular viewpoint and to come to a view for which there is a discernible, appropriate warrant, albeit one which is always exposed to critique. Yet as Bridges and Smith argue: The nature and force of such arguments are themselves, of course, philosophical questions, just as the nature and force of evidence in science or history, of reasoning in mathematics or of commentary in literary criticism raise philosophical questions.8 Moreover, some authors may thus offer different accounts of how philosophy itself counts as research; in other words, philosophy does not have to be thought of as a preliminary, perhaps ground-clearing, exercise that comes before real or proper research. During the grand days of the philosophy of science debate, there was a lot of discussion about paradigms. Hempel, Popper, Kuhn, Lakatos, Feyerabend, but also Gadamer, Ricoeur, Taylor and Habermas, were all, in one way or another, engrossed in questions pertaining to the nature of science or social science. They were also interested in the nature of scientific explanation concerning the social sciences and the way in which explanation related to understanding. They argued for different positions, but were united in the belief that there is no logic of discovery and no unity in science. Concerning the method to be followed (or the kind of explanation to be sought) there was less unanimity. Things have moved on in various directions. Some authors argue that the work that has been done since then belongs to a historical turn, a social turn, a pragmatic turn, a political turn, an ethical turn and even an aesthetic turn. A closer look at the philosophy of the natural sciences nowadays indicates that there are lots of examples of studies where the particular concepts used to explain certain phenomena are placed within the discussion of a particular science and practice. We think the latter is an important lesson that should be learned from philosophy of science: to concern oneself with specific problems in particular areas seems extremely fruitful. Here and elsewhere, it is important to consider what can be done in a particular social or scientific practice clearly we should accept that science too is a cultural practice. But there is more, as describing what others do in a particular area or considering how they conceptualise the reality as they find it is probably not enough, as such a critical stance may not able to convince others of what needs to be done. There is a further issue from the discipline of history that we should take into account. Giving language and structure to facts, visions and events from the past, seeing relationships, making connections, asking questions in short, constructing an acceptable story from what happened, about how it could have been and how, presumably and roughly, it must have been, is the historians task. But how should we commence? How does one get a hold on the interactions between people, their relational and behavioural patterns, their ways of thinking and mentalities if they have evaporated and can hardly be retraced except via the twisting detour of indirect testimonies and sources? And how might we bring order into this colossal chaos of fragmentary remnants? How, in other words, can one
8Bridges

Downloaded At: 02:51 21 April 2011

and Smith, Philosophy, methodology and educational research: Introduction, 134.

Paedagogica Historica

629

completely encompass and grasp the educational past itself a very diffuse category that constantly requires differentiation in time and space? The response that can be found in virtually all the classic handbooks from the history of education and it perhaps appears even more regularly in the naive derivative works that were used to train teachers at various levels of education is the claim that history is created by autonomous subjects. Leading educators act according to the traditional discourse of the history of ideas and are not so much under the influence of social and cultural processes. Rather, they generate such processes. Great figures in education are largely perceived as great thinkers, whose ideas have led and guided the practices of raising children and educating them. Such figures seem to be the crystallisation and accumulation points of diverse and even supra-historical ideas that, admittedly, could have derived their inspiration in time and space from somewhere else, but who have precipitated new and authentic syntheses. Such a line of argument not only presupposes a unity and consistency of thought (found in the work of these scholars) but often inserts an almost linear, systematic progress (namely improvement) as regards education, into the framework. This transmitted history of educational thought resembles a chain in which the classic authors produce, under the inspiration of their predecessors, important and valuable insights that are reflected in books and journals and elicit further writing. To this, various environmental factors were added that might have served as catalysts or facilitators of the dissemination process. The idea of a kind of Zeitgeist, which creates the favourable climate in which educational ideas can develop and be transmitted, exemplifies this. The question that arises here, however, is how should the conceptual unity of such a concept of inclusion be conceived? There is no list of empirical criteria and even if there is a consensus among historians, which is doubtful, the problem will not be resolved. This is not so much because such a conceptual category is itself the product of specific historical and social circumstances, but because as a conceptual tool to understand the past, it has epistemological limitations. The human construction of the historical reality of the past always bears the mark of a particular perspective, and is also necessarily a kind of reduction: either dated linguistic concepts are used or the present-day wording is applied which does not really fit the earlier context. The historical reality is a reality that, in the words of Michel de Certeau, is first created through the historiographical operation present in the interpretation itself. The historical researcher imposes meanings, a particular kind of rationality, coherence, intelligibility, and even contingency onto the past of which the past is ignorant. The past, and therefore also the educational past is, in other words, no more than an a posteriori construction of the historian through a defective language. As the historical theoretician Frank Ankersmit9 has made abundantly clear, intertextuality in history is the source and the birthplace of historical reality. The interpretive trail that leads to history is ultimately the historical reality itself. It seems therefore very likely that, if we are not capable of grasping the relativity of the categories we use, we will indeed run the danger, as Umberto Eco has so poignantly expressed, of winning nothing and losing everything. A historical researcher simply cannot permit herself to be blind to the way in which the historical conditions of her own time co-determine the finality and the direction of the narrative constructions about the past nor to the discursive practices to which they give rise. JeanFranois Lyotard and others have argued that because of our historical thrownness in the world, we are only capable of producing small and thus very fragmentary stories. But, with such heterogeneity of genres and plurality of stories we can readily live. Indeed, a
9F.R. Ankersmit, De Spiegel van het Verleden. Exploraties I: Geschiedtheorie [The Mirror of the Past. Explorations I: Theory of History] (Kampen: Kok, 1996).

Downloaded At: 02:51 21 April 2011

630

P. Smeyers and M. Depaepe

supra- or extra-historical Archimedean point from which history also in the chronological sense could be grasped is not available, and whoever thinks he has found it, opens the door for a revival of ideological fundamentalism and fanaticism. So again, we arrive at the conclusion that only by taking the particular into account may we possibly arrive at interesting insights. At the same time, the historical discipline warns us that the concepts and frameworks we use mark and limit our interpretations. Despite the fact that we are necessarily aware of the fragmentary nature of our work, there is nothing else we can do. Interestingly, a similar conclusion is reached when philosophy of education is the object of reflection. That insights neither from philosophy of education nor, more generally, from educational theory can simply be applied in educational contexts is, we think, recognised by practitioners and theoreticians. Such recognition can be attributed to epistemological and ethical forces. As regards the kind of theory one needs, however, opinions differ. According to some scholars, the insights we need are beyond what empirical research can deliver. Yet philosophy or, more generally, theory may also be limited. Philosophical argument may show that some questions do not make sense. The philosopher can defy and provoke by offering another reading, another interpretation. However, she cannot impose a compelling argument for either educational practice or theory. For Socrates, at least in one particular reading, the answer has to be kept open. Others will follow this and stress that every answer is necessarily tentative. Perhaps it might be better therefore to embrace the position that in the end one cannot but offer a particular stance, a particular judgement, a commitment to this or that in life. Instead of being neutral, only looking for presuppositions, trying to solve puzzles, one indeed shows how things have to be. Taking this advice right from the very beginning may lead to the conclusion that what has to be offered in our philosophical reflections is above all else no more than one solution that we are able to commit ourselves to. A similar argument can be made for the discussions we have as historians and philosophers of educational research. It is too easy to ridicule research, and we have no longer to be convinced of the truth in Marxs dictum that we are led by interests of a largely social nature. What we need is a detailed analysis of educational policy and practice combined with suggestions about how things could be done otherwise. We have to change direction, and an analogy can be drawn with what is happening in philosophy of education and educational theory, and move away from meta-theoretical preoccupations. Granted, theory is always there if one conceptualises the reality one lives in. But this kind of theory takes the deeper Socratic irony a step further. It seeks to change the reality beyond the traditional dichotomy of practice and theory and it fully accepts that it is beyond good and evil. It goes without saying that a similar conclusion is reached from the perspective of the history of education. There it becomes clear that even the realisation of a minimal theoretical stance always requires to take into account the particularities of the context as they are given and thus operative in a particular period. A general summation of this could be that we have to continue to criticise particular explanatory models and particular developments in educational practices. Indeed, we have to be attentive to developments that might be harmful and take internal or external power relationships into account. But there is more. The debate about method as such is no longer fertile (if it ever was). We hold the belief that, in our work as historians and philosophers of educational research, relevance and progress can only come about if we unravel what is involved in particular cases of educational practice and research. This would involve refraining from being habitually critical and consequently coming up with suggestions. In this way, we would present ourselves as true participants within educational research and practice. This would generate political research that is beyond positivism and nihilism, that

Downloaded At: 02:51 21 April 2011

Paedagogica Historica

631

does more than just the Spielerei of ever more and more futile research, and is as receptive to what was valuable in the past as to what is worthwhile in the present. The articles in this issue reflect (aspects of) the broad issues that were touched upon above. Thus Richard Smith wonders how far notions of philosophy as austere and analytic are responsible for ideals of educational research as unnaturally tidy and formal, and even for conceptions of the practice of education in schools and universities as focused on targets, performance indicators and statistics. He argues that the nature of philosophy is perhaps best understood through its history. Thus he concludes that the philosopher must go to school not only with the poets but also with the historians, so that the disciplinary divisions here become ever harder to mark out, to the enrichment of those who practise them. In their paper, Jan Masschelein and Maarten Simons suggest that historians do not need philosophical doctrine or (meta-)theory, nor philosophical method, but that they may find some help in a particular philosophical ethos, i.e. an ethos of discomfort or attentive study. Thus philosophy is characterised as an intrinsically educational endeavour, as education or paideia. In Chronicles and Critics Paul Standish addresses the criticism directed at some philosophers of education for their tendency to deal with eternal questions in pursuit of timeless truths, with insufficient awareness of the genesis of the ideas they refer to and insensitivity to historical context. He argues that the field is, however, more different from and more varied than is implied. More specifically, the logic of the assumptions behind the criticism of usage of the present tense is questioned, and this leads to an exploration of different dimensions of time that casts light on the nature of history. Lynn Fendler addresses the upside of the inevitability of presentism thus using it as a vantage point, as an opportunity to foster a critical understanding of our present circumstances. This strategic presentism means that historiographical methodology includes careful consideration of the politics of historical writing that influence the choice of subject, the construction of the reader, the rhetorical form of the argument, and the authority of the historian. Thus the critical potential of an approach along the lines of strategic presentism is made clear. Focusing more in particular on qualitative and quantitative research methods, Paul Smeyers starts in his paper from the distinction between educational research grounded in the empirical traditions of the social sciences (commonly called quantitative and qualitative methods) and other forms of scholarship such as theoretical, conceptual or methodological essays, critiques of research traditions and practices and those studies grounded in the humanities (e.g. history, philosophy, literary analysis, arts-based inquiry). He argues that interpretive research goes beyond research as the accumulation of knowledge and comes close to those areas of scholarship that were distinguished from educational research grounded in the empirical traditions of the social sciences. The paper discusses various problems relative to the different types of research and argues that educational research (the study of education) should be characterised by various modes of explanation depending on the kind of theoretical interest one is pursuing. It does not give us fixed and universal knowledge of the social world as such, but rather contributes to the task of improving upon our practical knowledge of ongoing social life. Thus it presupposes dialogue between all those involved, invokes a normative stance and should be seen as a case of positive slowness that prevents absorption in the chaos of unmediated complexity. The final three articles of this issue are, to a certain extent, of a somewhat different kind. No wonder, because they were conceived initially as part of another special issue, for which the proposal was sent by Ning de Coninck-Smith almost at the same time as ours. As most leading journals in one or another field are confronted with the lack of space to realise all interesting applications, the editors of Paedagogica Historica found it wise to combine both. Their arguments for doing so lay far beyond pragmatic interests. Philosophers of

Downloaded At: 02:51 21 April 2011

632

P. Smeyers and M. Depaepe

education may have to question assumptions involved in the belief in one or another method as much as possible but this does not hinder the fact that historians of education are condemned to use some of these methodologies in their daily practice of interpreting the educational past. In this section, several Scandinavian researchers, who have a longstanding tradition in combining Anglo-American research traditions with German and even French developments, all deal in one way or another with problems linked to the use of narratives in the history of education. Taking the point of departure in three different narratives concerning training as a cabinet maker, Ida Juul shows how the choice of a particular education is ascribed different significance, depending on the period and the individuals social background. In order to grasp the intersection between factors connected to the concepts of generation and class position the article draws on Karl Mannheims theory of generations and Pierre Bourdieus concept of habitus and field. Thus she concludes that the decision to become an apprentice is not as obvious a choice in the 1980s or today as it was in the 1960s. It is illustrated how both habitus and generation influence not only educational choices but also how these choices are justified. Helle Bjerg and Lisa Rosn Rasmussen focus on the formation of pupils subjectivities within the Danish school and educational system (19452005). Thus they expose inherent methodological problems stemming from the use of sources produced in the present for studying the past. The article draws on post-structural ideas of subjectivation and performativity developed by Judith Butler and suggests two analytical moves: a notion of time (as temporality) and the concepts of performativity and enactment are introduced to deal with the displacement of narrated subjectivities in the interviews. Thus the interviewees are said to perform as memorising subjects while enacting different subjectivities. In the final contribution, Ning de ConinckSmith offers some methodological reflections on the use of narratives. It is based on her experiences with interviewing seven men and seven women who graduated from a Danish high school in 1980, at a moment when the upper secondary system underwent a process of democratisation. In addition to providing extensive narrative data about the experience of going through the educational system in the 1970s and 1980s, the interview raised two fundamental methodological issues: the first concerns the relationship between the narrative and its historical context; the second relates to how narrated truths can be understood more as split and divided between the interviewee and the interviewer than as negotiated (as is frequently argued for). She suggests that these narratives act more as a testing ground for the development of interpretations and reflections about the early years of the so-called educational explosion which took place in Denmark from the 1960s until today than as ultimate truths. Notes on contributors
Paul Smeyers is Research Professor of Philosophy of Education at the University of Gent and parttime at the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, both in Belgium. He taught philosophy of education and methodology of the Geisteswissenschaften (Qualitative Research Methods). He holds, or has held several positions in the International Network of Philosophers of Education (President since 2006). He chairs the Research Community Philosophy and History of the Discipline of Education: Evaluation and Evolution of the Criteria for Educational Research established by the Research Foundation Flanders, Belgium (Fonds voor Wetenschappelijk Onderzoek Vlaanderen). Together with Nigel Blake, Richard Smith and Paul Standish he co-authored Thinking Again. Education after Postmodernism (1998), Education in an Age of Nihilism (2000), and The Therapy of Education (2007) and co-edited The Blackwell Guide to the Philosophy of Education (2003). Together with Marc Depaepe he co-edited Beyond Empiricism: On Criteria for Educational Research (2003), Educational Research: Why What works doesnt work (2006), Educational Research: Networks and Technologies (2007), and Educational Research: The Educationalisation of Social Problems (2008). With

Downloaded At: 02:51 21 April 2011

Paedagogica Historica

633

Michael Peters and Nick Burbules he co-authored Showing and Doing: Wittgenstein as a Pedagogical Philosopher (2008). Marc Depaepe (1953) is Full Professor at the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Campus Kortrijk, where he chairs the (sub)faculty of Psychology and Educational Sciences and acts as coordinator of the group of Human Sciences. He served as Secretary (19891991) and Chair (19911994) of the International Standing Conference for the History of Education (ISCHE) and as Chair of the Belgian Dutch Society for the History of Education (19992002). He has been Co-editor-in-chief of Paedagogica Historica, since 2005. He has published on Belgian educational history (mostly the history of primary and preschool education), on theoretical and methodological aspects of the history of education, on the international history of educational sciences, especially of paidology and experimental pedagogy, and on the history of education in the former Belgian Congo and Zaire.

Downloaded At: 02:51 21 April 2011