Reflexivity and the politics of knowledge: researchers as ‘brokers’ and ‘translators’ of educational development

Abstract

This paper interrogates the ways in which 'reflexivity' has proliferated as a normative methodological discourse in the field of international and comparative education. We argue that the dominant approach to reflexivity foregrounds the standpoints of researchers and their subjects in a way that does not attend to the situated, contingent, and relational dynamics of 'knowing' itself. This too easily bypasses the performative effects of research; how disciplinary ways of knowing (through associated methods and discourses) enact particular realities of the world. Drawing on theoretical devices from actor-network theory, we put forward the perspective that social researchers, through the methods and disciplinary discourses they deploy, are 'brokers' and 'translators' of knowledge. This signifies the ways in which the process of research engages actors, scripts, and performances which produce particular understandings of, and effects on, education and development. The paper illustrates the contribution of this perspective through the case of research on teachers and education reform in India. IntroductionIn this paper, we interrogate the ways in which 'reflexivity' has proliferated as a normative methodological discourse in qualitative social research. In the field of international and comparative education, and the social sciences more broadly, reflexive research has become synonymous with 'good' research practice: it signals the researcher's intent to be sensitive to local contexts and to the representation of research participants. Often this is done through an acknowledgement of how the researcher's own knowledge frames (social positions and theoretical perspectives) relate to the knowledge frames of the 'other' under study. Sometimes, particularly in research that purports to be participatory, emancipatory, or critical, the epistemological standpoints of the researched are privileged over the researchers'. While these intentions are certainly important in orienting us towards ethical research endeavours, we explore the limitations of this kind of 'reflexivity'. We argue that in foregrounding, and even monumentalising, the standpoints of 'knowers' in research (whether the researcher or the researched), such approaches to reflexivity do not attend to the situated, contingent, and relational dynamics of 'knowing' itself. Moreover, these approaches too easily bypass the performative effects of research; how disciplinary ways of knowing (through associated methods and discourses) enact particular realities of the world. In the domain of education development, where policy and research are often clearly entwined, and where the stakes for the marginalised are so high, the ways in which

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