Opening Third Spaces for Research in Education

“Blakely and Hemphill have written a methods book that our field desperately needs. They have taken to task the profound lack of ingenuity, courage, and challenge to longstanding racist, classist, homophobic, and patriarchal patterns in the field of education and, specifically, education research. This is worth reading for all researchers. It is essential reading for those aiming to develop research practices that disrupt the radicalized inequities in our field.”

Jeff Duncan-Andrade, Professor, Latina/o Studies & Race and Resistance Studies, San Francisco State University

“This text is one that any equity-minded education faculty teaching a graduate or upper level undergraduate class on research methodology should adopt. Blakley and Hemphill provide a valuable addition to our field by using an orientation rarely even discussed in other methods texts. Third space allows them to investigate intersectional identities and critical theory as it plays out in research design, analysis, and genres of representation. The book is joyfully well researched, crisply written, and brings together topics I often address in my teaching, yet never before with the support of a single text.”

Barbara A. Henderson, Director, Doctoral Program in Educational Leadership Graduate College of Education, San Francisco State University

“Opening Third Spaces for Research in Education: Challenging the Limits of Technocratic Methods is a remarkable work. Extremely well written and richly rewarding. It contains a brilliant analysis of the problems haunting education today and it develops new ways of thinking and acting when it comes to educational research. A must read for anyone seriously interested in educational research today.”

Klaus Nielsen, Professor, Department of Psychology, Aarhus University, Denmark

“Opening Third Spaces for Research in Education: Challenging the Limits of Technocratic Methods offers a powerful argument for shifting the focus of research away from the overly formalistic concerns with conducting research correctly towards research that is aligned with the subject matter in education. The book—spanning the philosophical underpinnings of different research traditions, the ways research as a subject is taught to students, and the concepts researched (e.g., learning)—enlightens the reader regarding the many alternative ways relevant research may be conducted in education. A highly recommended read for everyone planning to do research in education.”

Jacob Klitmøller, Associate Professor of Educational Psychology, Department of Psychology, Aarhus University, Denmark

“The brilliance of Opening Third Spaces for Research in Education: Challenging the Limits of Technocratic Methods lies in its being situated in colonial historicity that privileged Western psychological research models which have, by and large, colonized educational research under the pretext of protecting objectivity. By succinctly unveiling the falsehood upon which the foundational pillars that support the false binarism inherent in the derivative educational research models, Erin Blakely and David Hemphill, painstakingly demonstrate how the disarticulation between the interpretative discourse and the interests of the interpreter often denies the dialectical relationship between subjectivity and objectivity. That is, the blind embrace of objectivity found in most educational research, denies the subjectivity that determines why a particular area is considered worthy of research in the first place, and how certain knowledges are subordinated to the imperatives of number crunching which, by design, erases the human face always present in all research endeavors.

What the authors of Opening Third Spaces for Research in Education: Challenging the Limits of Technocratic Methods make abundantly clear is the high societal costs exacted through the Godfication of scientism, not science, and the blind celebration of methodological elegance. Given the unacceptable high rate of educational failure, particularly in urban areas populated mostly by non-white students, readers of this important book will understand that the predominance of the technocratic paradigm in educational research is an ideological trap that sacrifices human factors along the lines of gender, ethnicity, class, and culture at the altar of research objectivity. This insightful book must be read by all educators who consider themselves agents of change in the struggle to promote a less dystopian and more humane world.”

Donaldo Macedo, Ph.D., Professor Emeritus and Distinguished Professor of Liberal Arts, University of Massachusetts Boston

Dedication

Introduction

ONE Examining Scientism in Educational Research

1.1 Technocratic research and the commodification of knowledge

1.2 The dominance of positivism and behaviorism

1.3 Scientific paradigm shifts as social consensus

1.4 Phenomenology of the social world

TWO Challenging Binary Logic

2.1 Postmodern perspectives

2.2 Histories of dialectical thinking

2.3 Pragmatism

2.4 Agential realism

THREE Critiquing Standard Research Methods

3.1 The false binary of quantitative/qualitative research

3.2 Rethinking “researchable” questions and variables

3.3 Instrumentation and problems with validity and reliability

3.4 Institutional review boards and the cursory administrative determination of ethical practices

3.5 Research reporting conventions and constraints on research possibilities

FOUR Reconceptualizing Learning in Educational Research

4.1 Problems with specifying learning outcomes and the myth of transfer

4.2 Learning as legitimate peripheral participation

4.3 Learning as identity formation 

4.4 Learning as episodic, discontinuous, and nonlinear

FIVE Expanding Third Spaces for Research

5.1 Cycles of inquiry, lesson study, and archaeologies of knowledge

5.2 Multivocal narratives as third spaces 

5.3 Crossing contexts and moving into borderlands

5.4 Supporting democracy and imagination in research forums

5.5 Research as an entangled material-discursive practice

Conclusions

Author Biographies

Index

Erin Blakely

Erin Blakely graduated with a B.A. from the University of Michigan, before moving to New York and working at an independent school for elementary and middle school students with learning differences. She earned her master’s degree in education at San Francisco State University, where she later taught research methodologies in the Graduate College of Education. For her thesis, she conducted an ethnography on the normalization of narrative form in a diasporic community in Northern California. She spent the next decade coordinating action research projects, designing family leadership and English Language Learning programs for PreK-8 public schools, and facilitating county-wide equity initiatives. She subsequently did postgraduate work in Denmark. Her research interests include critical theory, cultural studies, pragmatism, social practice theory, history of the family, language socialization, narrative, and research design. She now lives in southern California, working in higher education, writing, and making mixed media collages.

David Hemphill

David Hemphill is Professor Emeritus in the Graduate College of Education at San Francisco State University, having worked there as a faculty member for over 35 years. His research and teaching interests include international and multicultural education, cultural studies, critical theory, postmodern and postcolonial theory, popular culture and popular music, adult education, literacy, second language acquisition, and research methods. He received the Imogene Okes Research Award of the American Association for Adult, Alternative and Continuing Education for his adult literacy research. While at the university he led the development of two doctoral programs, pioneered multiple international initiatives, worked as a visiting scholar in Poland, Thailand, and Japan, and served as Department Chair, Director of Graduate Studies, and Associate Dean. Prior to coming to the university, Hemphill worked for a decade as an English language teacher and program director in community-based organizations in Oakland and San Francisco serving adult Asian immigrants and refugees. He holds a B.A. in Political Science and Asian Languages from the University of California, Berkeley, and an M.A. in Bilingual Education and Ed.D. in Educational Organization and Leadership from the University of San Francisco. He was brought up in Tokyo and Washington, DC and speaks several Asian and European languages. He is also a trombonist and musical arranger.