Conceptualising Research in Education: Challenging Concepts and Conceptions

Abstract

This chapter introduces the contributions to the Companion that focus on aspects of conceptualising research in education. As a whole, lead chapters and response pieces illustrate the ways in which concepts and conceptions can be challenged by raising questions about how particular thematics have come to dominate conventional framings and understandings of researching education. Contributions explore such topics as the merits of the view that ‘research in education’ must somehow remain distinct from ‘educational research’, and how this might be challenged through reference to arguments that promote a framing of ‘research through education’, and ‘research as education’. The introduction also draws on wider links to other themes in the Companion, namely, why this might matter to how we characterise, contextualise, legitimate and represent research in education, particularly if ‘research’ were to be conceptualised as obtaining through ‘education’, rather than the reverse.