Research for Academic Success Versus Understanding and Transforming Education: The Case of ESBRINA's Research Group

• In Event: 72.018 - Research Knowledge and a Vision of Equal Scholarly Participation: International Perspectives and Opportunities for Collaboration

Abstract

Spain has a long educational tradition with contributions of prominent figures such as Luis Vives, Ignacio de Loyola, or pedagogical initiatives such as the progressive schools movement at the beginning of the 20th century. Nevertheless, only since the Education Act of 1970, a legislative framework set up the legal and institutional conditions to develop educational research in a more systematic and continued manner. This paper offers, first, a historical frame for the Spanish educational research, and second, the explicit ontological, epistemological and methodological positioning of a research group whose aim is not only academic success, but also understanding and transforming education.

Conceptual framing
As scholars in a country with a long educational tradition but a relatively short history of educational research, one of our objectives is to conceptually look to the past, in order to build the preset-future. Drawing on Søren Kierkegaard’s thought that “life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards”, we have contextualized research problems we study in their historical, political, economic, social and technological dimensions. Locating phenomena in multiple dimensions enables better defining, studying and transforming them. From this perspective we have promoted a permanent inquiry-based process in our research group (ESBRINA – Contemporary Subjectivities, Visualities and Educational Environments -2014SGR 00632).

Modes of inquiry and Data Sources
The modes of inquiry and data collected for this ongoing study include: a) An extensive use of bibliography to build up the perspectives from the past and present (Page, 2008), b) The organization of national and international meetings to collect and analyze educational research results, c) The use of participatory research methods to involve both researchers and those being researched in the knowledge production processes (Hernández, 2011; Nind, 2014; Bergold & Thomas, 2012), and d) The development of interactive workshops to periodically reflect upon our ontological, epistemological and methodological positions (Back, 2007). Notes and recordings from these modes of inquiry serve as our data for this paper.

Overview of Results
This paper first offers a historical frame for the Spanish educational research (Sancho-Gil & Hernández-Hernández, 2010; Sancho-Gil & Giró, 2013). Then, we present experiences of building a research group that focuses not only on academic success but also on ways of understanding and transforming education. We also make visible our shifts in researcher positionalities– from a socio-constructionist approach and a hermeneutic phenomenology, as foundation for the notion of experience, to the use of narrative and visual methods, to a post-qualitative research approach (Hernández-Hernández & Sancho-Gil, 2015).

Significance
In a complex, unequal, and unfair world, academics have an increasing responsibility in ensuring that scientific knowledge contributes to understanding educational problems and, to the extent possible, providing solutions. Today more than ever we need to recognize academic and cultural traditions while placing the problems in the network of relationships, tensions and opportunities offered by globalization. Confronting positions from different contexts can provide an empathetic conceptualization of knowledge, understanding and improvement.

Authors

• Juana M. Sancho-Gil, Universitat de Barcelona

• Fernando Hernandez-Hernandez, Universitat de Barcelona