Research Impact as Colonial/Neoliberal Constraint for Imagining Differently

• In Event: AERA Roundtable Session 7
  In Roundtable Session: Humanizing Education Research Methodologies: Antiracist and Anticolonial Stories

Abstract

In this paper, we discuss the ways research impact is constructed in the field of education. We start from the question: what does it mean to think about impact in educational research? Based on a large research project on knowledge construction, we analyze the tensions that emerge between the neoliberal and the colonial regulation of academic work. Using an anticolonial and feminist lens, we found that assessment of research impact and the ways researchers imagine different forms of impact, are imbued with the notion that knowledge happens in academia and should be communicated to other spaces such as schools, communities and policy makers. We propose to imagine research as unfixed, fluid, and broader, to critically review naturalized assumptions of knowledge construction.

Authors

• AnaLuisa Munoz-Garcia, Pontificia Universidad Catolica de Chile

• Andrea Lira, Teachers College, Columbia University