Educational Research - the Ethics and Aesthetics of Statistics

214 P. Standish
of the products but on their own presentational skills and their expertise in human resource
management. David Brent sees his own approach as inspirational. He thinks outside-the-box.
He brings a new philosophy to work. But his crass ineptness, his cringe-making attempts at
people management, and his barely concealed hang-ups and insecurities—absurd and funny as
these are—in the end reinforce the sense of the inescapable emptiness of this office-world.
6. This is particularly pertinent to questions of labelling and identity (see Cigman & Davis, 2008).
But it can also be seen in what is closer to home for many readers of this book in the gradings
and evaluations that go with research assessment. Thus, to look back to an earlier iteration of
the UK RAE, one looked around one’s department and wondered whether while Jones was
surely a 4 and Smith perhaps a 5, Evans was really no more than a 3b.
7. See Paul Smeyers (this volume) for a nuanced account of how the place of statistics in the
practice of education might properly be understood.
8. For an elaboration of this point in relation to a Derridean account of meaning, see Ian Munday
(this volume).
9. For a broad endorsement and survey of such conceptions of accounting, see Gray (2002). For
a more critical discussion and an argument in favour of a more communitarian approach, see
Lehman (1999). Both have been influential articles.
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