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Mud and hair: an essay on the conditions of educational research

Smith, R.D.

Authors



Contributors

P. Smeyers
Editor

M. Depaepe
Editor

Abstract

Educational research is of course affected by the economic, institutional and physical contingencies of its time, and in our time it is increasingly driven by them. Much can be said about this; and perhaps it might be suspected that there is a tendency to ignore or suppress how research, and not only in education, is so affected. Such suspicion however risks feeding the strand in the tradition of thought that urges aspiration to Thought Itself, untrammelled by mundane considerations. Since philosophy is prominent in that tradition it is salutary that increased notice is these days being taken of its own rootedness in the material, including textuality, whose acknowledgement is to various degrees found in the writings of, among others, Montaigne, Descartes and Plato himself – particularly salutary in their cases because the tradition so often places them among advocates of Pure Thought and withdrawal from the world. Both that tradition and the relatively new material drivers of academic research need to be treated with a proper irony. That, more than anything, keeps open the possibility of independent thought.

Citation

Smith, R. (2014). Mud and hair: an essay on the conditions of educational research. In P. Smeyers, & M. Depaepe (Eds.), Educational research : material culture and its representation (133-144). Springer Verlag. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-03083-8_9

Online Publication Date Nov 12, 2013
Publication Date Feb 21, 2014
Deposit Date Jun 2, 2014
Publicly Available Date Mar 28, 2024
Publisher Springer Verlag
Pages 133-144
Series Title Educational research.
Book Title Educational research : material culture and its representation.
Chapter Number 9
DOI https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-03083-8_9
Additional Information Series: Educational Research, Vol. 8