Research and the Theoretical Field - Pauldowling.me

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If the culture of the teacher is to become part of the consciousness of the child,
then the culture of the child must first be in the consciousness of the teacher.
(Bernstein, 1974: 199)
Bernstein and Rogers are, of course, not necessarily inconsistent in terms of
thinking about practice, though their theoretical spaces are more than a little
out of alignment.
Much later—shortly before he died—Bernstein (1999, 2000) produced another
important distinction between what he referred to as horizontal discourses and
vertical discourses (see the introduction to Chapter 2). These resonate
somewhat with restricted and elaborated codes in which we can see the
origins of the later conceptualization. Now I won’t reprise Bernstein’s schema,
here. Instead, I’ll offer an alternative, which is at a lower level of abstraction
than Bernstein’s, but is not entirely inconsistent with it. I have referred to the
esoteric domain of educational research as comprising the theoretical space
and methodology. Now I want to add to this discursive structure a practical
space that is not necessarily explicitly principled in quite the same way.
Rather, it concerns the practicalities of the educational research activity. For
example, for many of us, our research activities involve the production of
publications. And, as I suggested in the introduction to Chapter 3, not just any
publications. The strong institutionalization of theory and methodology in the
natural sciences entails the prevalence of experimental method and
objectivity—objectivity in the sense that a given research performance can be
made transparent with respect to methodology. The high economic cost and
potential commercial and political opportunities associated with much natural
science research also places a very high premium on both originality (or
course) and nowness. These two factors clearly privilege the learned journals
and peer review over other forms of publication. The strong institutionalization
of the natural sciences alongside their association with all other forms of
research in such governmental processes as the Research Assessment
Exercise (the RAE, which evaluates and ranks the research productivity of all
institutions, departments and, in effect, individuals) certainly entails that this
privileging of work published as short articles in peer reviewed journals
hegemonises educational studies, at least. For some areas of work, including
working with theory in a weakly institutionalised field, the short journal article
may be far from ideal.
Furthermore, the weak institutionalization of the field outside of the natural
sciences entails that some areas are in a more or less permanent state of
‘revolution’ (cf Kuhn, 1970). Indeed, this has been said quite explicity in
respect of literary studies (eg Rosenberg, 1962). Certainly ‘normal’ or strongly
institutionalised research in educational studies is limited to far smaller
groups, even, perhaps, individuals; this renders peer review and even the
examining of doctoral theses a rather more risky and certainly more
problematic business. One response to this in educational studies seems to
be the avoidance of coherent theory altogether in favour of naïve
empiricism—more of that in Chapter 7. I should also mention the value placed
upon funded research in terms of generating income, the careers of contract
researchers, the prestige of large research contracts etc. Again, many forms
of research activity are not well suited to large-scale funded programmes, but
RESEARCH & THE THEORETICAL FIELD