Post Post Post: Putting Feminist Methodology to Work

• In Event: The Usefulness of Post-Structuralism in Educational Research and Practice

Abstract

This paper asks "whither feminist methodology" after the posts. What philosophical "turns" are informing it? What names and concepts have great currency? Across competing knowledge systems and epistemological frames, what might be said about whatever is emerging now, out of the wreckage of modernity where key terms are under duress, including, of course, (post)feminism?

My interest in this paper is to (re)think developments in education research in light of developments in feminist methodology. To this end, I will engage with anthropologist George Marcus and his suggestions for the kind of training that would prepare researchers for changing conditions. Such practices move us into what Marcus terms "metamethod" that reconceptualizes and experiments with standard practices, moving beyond current scripts and their conventional codifying and disciplining of inquiry, what some of my colleagues in education research have begun to term "post-qualitative." To pursue this question, I will work closely the Spencer Foundation report, issued in September, 2009, on the preparation of education researchers, based on lessons learned from Spencer Research Training Grants.[1]

What is noteworthy about the report, in both overt and subtle ways, is the influence of the last decade of protest against the 2002 SRE report. Key terms are acknowledged as matters of dispute (e.g., rigor, value-neutrality and objectivity are questions, not assumptions, p. 99). The “comfortable” navigation of “the complex intellectual, social and educational worlds” (p. 10) is interrupted by calls to “soul-searching” as one follows the debates across, for example, the Educational Researcher (p. 22). Grasp of “the epistemological underpinnings” (p. 23) of “warring ideas” (p. 24) is endorsed for all. “Hotly-contested terrain” (p. 26) is both acknowledged and used to warrant a call for producing work “of sufficient quality to withstand critical scrutiny from many directions” (p. 26). Contextual knowledge is posited as key across paradigms (p. 28). In short, rather than a narrowly defined methodological rigor (e.g. control groups), the report endorses “a depth of understanding educational contexts . . . sensitivity to issues of social justice. . . and epistemological sophistication” (p. 30). Frequent references are made to how the tensions between qualitative and quantitative help one “think deeply” about underlying assumptions (p. 77). Mindful attendance of “some of the more lively and well-attended” (p. 97) AERA sessions that feature these tensions is endorsed. Even the old chestnut that question determines method is something to be discussed, not assumed (p. 95) and research questions are, finally, seen as evolving (p. 109).

After ten years somewhat lost to fighting governmental incursions into science, the re-positivization of the field and consequent re-marginalization of qualitative work, the development of the contemporary scene of educational research has parallels in feminist methodology where a new geography of feminist work demonstrates what some have called "a return to the empirical." This paper will put feminist post-structuralism to work to explore those parallels.

Author

• Patti A. Lather, The Ohio State University