A ‘Moot’ for Educational Research in Europe?

Abstract

For many years the EERJ Roundtable has been a standing event within the European Conference on Educational Research (ECER). In a discursive style it addresses issues related to contemporary relationships between educational research and educational policy in Europe. The changing educational landscape, together with shifting practices and discourses of educational research, prompted researchers to discuss the need for increased self-governance. It was taken up as the topic for the 2013 EERJ Roundtable and couched as a question: What is the possibility of a 'moot' for educational research in Europe? This article reports on the 2013 Roundtable. Its three short presentations and subsequent audience discussion have been summarised and reflected upon to make a case for a moot: a self-governing space for educational research. It reveals ECER, and particularly the EERJ Roundtable, as a scholarly and a political arena where the interplay between research, policy and larger patterns of social change can be reviewed, interrogated and appropriated critically into the disciplinary logics of educational research.

EERA and its European Conferences on Educational Research: A Patchwork of Research on European Educational Research

“…[6] In view of this diagnosis we would not opt for easy answers, more regulations, standardisations or even more reflexivity. On the one hand, an institutionalised research on educational research with the help of an observatory might be able to systematically collect and provide standardised information about educational research in Europe.…”

“…The EERA, its networks, the European Conferences on Educational Research (ECER) and the EERJ are significant places where these aspects and problems are discussed intensively, although the meta-reflection on how these problems are discussed and to what extent the discussions contribute to research quality or the process of Europeanisation is not extensively developed. This means that research on educational research, the development of a kind of observatory in order to support self-governance and discursive autonomy, is only slowly on its way (Lee, 2010;Hoveid et al, 2014).…”

What is yet to come? Three propositions on the future of educational research as a common good

“…As was noted during the moot, the future is not something awaiting but happening right now. Indeed it is: many creative attempts in this vein are already being pursued currently (see also last year's moot: Hoveid et al, 2014), and perhaps especially amongst emerging researchers. Alternative manners of making research results public are at the moment simply not valorized enough, however: even the OA model is still largely based on the valorization of textual matters.…”

What future for educational research in Europe? Political, epistemological and ethical challenges

“…The question was to focus on 'What is yet to come' and the challenges and opportunities for EER. It was a call to contribute to the creation of a space of self-reflexivity about the challenges of self-governance in the unfolding EER landscape and to debate ways of doing educational research differently (Hoveid et al, 2014).…”