Seminars 2012
26 January Professor Anoop Nayak, University of Newcastle
White Lines: Racist Graffiti, Skinhead Youth and Violence in the English Suburbs
19 April Professor John Schostak, Manchester Metropolitan University
Social Justice, Education and the Politics of Research Methodology
Research methodologies are not neutral. Whether it is the approach to IQ adopted by psychologists like Eysenck and their application by Murray to name an ‘underclass’ and promote welfare cuts as an ‘incentive’; or whether it is the adoption of anti-racist or feminist or marxist methodologies - a political standpoint is taken. When Michael Gove revived the term ‘educational underclass’ in his recent speech after the August 2011 riots and when the Riots Communities and Victims Panel (2012) reported there were 500,000 ‘forgotten families’, the political stakes at the back of ‘research’ was, for me, reinforced. It was again brought home to me when recently my first book Maladjusted Schooling published in 1983 was reissued this year by Routledge. Reviewing it again highlighted for me the question of whether research is undertaken to manipulate people to meet policy aims; or whether it is to create the conditions to listen to what people have to say and include their voices in decision making as a basis for democratic action. It is the difference between autocratic research and democratic research. It is this latter that has informed the books co-written recently with Jill Schostak on the theme of ‘radical research’. Thus, the question I want to address in the talk is: how can one do educational research that contributes to the conditions under which people can make a difference to their lives?
