Writing Up and Down: The Language of Educational Research

Smith, Richard

Abstract

There is a marked tendency in educational research to marginalise the written word, and to be wary of what I here call its ‘writerliness’: its capacity to go beyond the prosaic and the utilitarian, where meaning is understood largely in terms of the success of language in reflecting reality. I note various symptoms of this in the world of educational research, but especially in standard textbooks of educational research method, where the ambition to eliminate writing is particularly evident. In its second half the paper turns to educational research as the investigation less of causes than of meaning. Here writing—finding the right words—is itself research, rather than a process that is first performed according to various protocols of method and then ‘written up’. I draw on an illuminating discussion of this in Raimond Gaita's Introduction to recent editions of Peter Winch's The Idea of a Social Science and apply it to current debate over discipline in UK schools.

Citation

Smith, R. (2020). Writing Up and Down: The Language of Educational Research. Journal of Philosophy of Education, 54(3), 666-678. https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-9752.12440

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Online Publication Date: Jul 2, 2020
• Publication Date: 2020-06
• Deposit Date: Jul 22, 2020
• Publicly Available Date: Jul 22, 2020
• Journal: Journal of Philosophy of Education
• Print ISSN: 0309-8249
• Electronic ISSN: 1467-9752
• Publisher: Wiley
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Volume: 54
• Issue: 3
• Pages: 666-678
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-9752.12440
• Public URL: https://durham-repository.worktribe.com/output/1265911