Research in education (see Clar Doyle’s blog and the wonderful responses to it on this site) is going through a fascinating and disturbing period in the contemporary era. As part of a larger effort to recover forms of dominant power, some researchers in education are attempting to “recover” more traditional ways of doing educational research. In this process tired and damaging epistemological and ontological assumptions are being re-inserted into the cauldron of knowledge production and self-appointed gatekeepers are attempting to marginalize critical research in general and attempts such as the bricolage to gain a more complex understanding of educational processes in particular. It is not a good time for researchers concerned with social justice, the machinations of power, and the efforts to construct new ways of seeing a world and an educational status quo in crisis.

ANNOUNCEMENT: CALL FOR CONFERENCE PAPERS

DEADLINE: ROLLING, THROUGH OCTOBER, 2008

The University of Ljubljana (Slovenia), University of North Dakota Graduate School of Education and Human Development (USA), University of Auckland (New Zealand), and the AFM Krakow University College (Poland) are preparing an international scientific conference on the theme of: Practical Science (In Educational and Social Sciences). This will be an e-conference that is to take place entirely on the Internet. All the contributions are to be delivered exclusively in an electronic format. Participants will incur no travel costs.