Research and the Theoretical Field - Pauldowling.me

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concern the empirical setting, an artefact of the esoteric domain of the
research in transaction with the empirical field. The empirical setting is what I
refer to as the public domain of educational research; it is established by the
recontextualisation of the empirical field.
Clearly, the researcher must recontextualise the empirical field in some way,
minimally, by textualising or re-textualising it; research, after all, is presented
in textual form. Where the esoteric domain is very strongly institutionalised
and, in this respect, the researcher’s actions and conceptualising constrained,
then we might suggest that the empirical field acts as a kind of catalyst or
lever for the internal development of the esoteric domain. Again, this would be
rather like ‘normal science’ in Thomas Kuhn’s (1970) terms. In educational
studies, however, we often find that the esoteric domain—theoretical space
and methodology—are comparatively weakly institutionalised, so that the
researcher’s options are, in this respect, more fluid and the empirical field
potentially has more ‘voice’ in the transformation of the esoteric domain. Only
potentially, though, because we need also to factor in the subjectivity of the
researcher, which, as I noted in the previous chapter introduction, is
sometimes considered to be very important in some areas of research.
I have for some time argued (see, for example, Dowling, 1995) that the
recontextualising the empirical by educational research is potentially very
productive. However, it has implications. Most particularly, that research
findings are recontextualisations of the empirical entails that any attempt to
impose them back on the empirical field as monologic prescriptions for
practice is always unwise and, in many cases likely to be impossible;
educational research and educational practice and policy are different kinds of
activity. I’ll say a little more about this shortly. So what kind of opportunities
might educational research offer Essentially, research involves motivated
analysis. This involves putting some things together and keeping other things
apart, conceptually, in ways that, at least from the perspective of the empirical
field, are new. Mary Douglas’s (1996) organization of cultures in ‘cultural
theory’ (see the introductions to Chapters 4 and 5) would be a case in point;
she presents a new way for us to think about cultures that are familiar and,
perhaps, others that are unfamiliar to us. Rebecca Rogers (2003; see the
introduction to Chapter 3) encourages us to see a problem in certain
alignments between home and school cultures, rather than or as well as in
certain discontinuities between them. This is a reorganizing of the way we
think about cultural reproduction in/by the school. Basil Bernstein (1973)
distinguishes between elaborated and restricted speech codes and associates
the former with the school and with middle class students and the latter with
working class students. For him, at this time, it was this discontinuity rather
than the alignment between home and school that constituted the problem
and he pronounced his famous chiasmus:
RESEARCH & THE THEORETICAL FIELD