THE STIRLING INSTITUTE OF EDUCATION

1. WHAT KIND OF THEORY FOR HIGHER EDUCATION? Gert Biesta The Stirling Institute of Education aim: to explore and characterise the roles of theory in Higher Education research and scholarship from an ‘outsider’ perspective ‘HE tends to be a theory free zone and our event is intended to respond to this” (rough) impression of the field ↓ a more complicated picture, i.e, not without theory a less complicated picture, i.e., not dissimilar to ‘main stream’ educational research THE STIRLING INSTITUTE OF EDUCATION

2. [1] significant amount of (good) descriptive research on HE practice and policy description – analysis (trends/patterns) – relationships between dimensions [2] relatively small amount of quantitative studies going beyond descriptive statistics [3] noticable amount of ‘scholarship’: theoretical and, less often, historical explorations/reflections [pattern not dissimilar from ‘mainstream’ research] & THE STIRLING INSTITUTE OF EDUCATION

3. * similar themes and topics, with some more specific for HE (e.g., access and participation) * some uncritical alignment with policy speak and fashionable concepts (often with good intentions) * engagement with theories, theoretical notions, and theorists, e.g. activity theory, actor-network theory, communities of practice; legitimate peripheral participation; socio-cultural theory; complexity theory; problem-based learning; feminist theory; Kolb, Bourdieu, Foucault, Säljö, Marton Is HE research & scholarship flourishing without there being a strong role for theory? Why would we want (more) theory? What kind of theory would we want/need? THE STIRLING INSTITUTE OF EDUCATION

4. THE ROLE OF THEORY IN EMPIRICAL RESEARCH the ‘received’ view: three purposes of research → explanation, interpretation, emancipation the need for theory explanation: to move from correlation to account of (underlying) causative connections and mechanisms interpretation: deepening and broadening understanding of everyday interpretations (‘double hermeneutics’); from describing what people are saying to making intelligible why they are saying what they are saying emancipation: exposing hidden power structures that structure and distort such interpretations and experiences ↓ THE STIRLING INSTITUTE OF EDUCATION

5. HE research ↓ descriptive & analytical → interpretative research not surprising: education as a social and socially constructed reality (partly) explains low number of explanatory studies, as ‘causes’ and ‘effects’ are ‘produced’ through interpretation ↓ correlations and patterns, not strong causality What kind of theory for HE research? (1) ↓ if HE research aims to address ‘causal’ issues [explanation], then it needs theory that helps to make plausible how connections are produced/achieved THE STIRLING INSTITUTE OF EDUCATION

6. for example: * relationships between teaching, studying, assessment, learning ↓ convergence or theoretical pluralism? (my own interests: communication as practice & retrospective complexity reduction) * patterns and trajectories of participation and achievement ↓ theory to make plausible how such trajectories are achieved (own work: how patterns of participation are biographically achieved) → inevitability/necessity of interpretation/interpretative ontology ↓ theorising actions and interpretations THE STIRLING INSTITUTE OF EDUCATION

7. What kind of theory for HE research? (2) ↓ interpretation role of theory: why people are ‘saying’ what they are ‘saying’ ↓ “adding plausibility” strong(est) version: Weber’s explanatory understanding: to show how, given people’s interpretations of the situation, it was rational that they acted as they did weak(er) versions: adding plausibility through re-description: seeing actions ‘through the lens of’ (Foucault, Bourdieu, Lave & Wenger, Butler, etc.) or ‘as a case of’ (pastoral power, misrecognition, LPP, gender relationships etc.) THE STIRLING INSTITUTE OF EDUCATION

8. two questions about ‘adding plausibility’ to interpretations and actions (1) What are we doing when we engage in these forms of theorising? (2) Why would engage in such forms of theoretical work? [1] ‘adding plausibility’ is a well-rehearsed justification of interpretative research plausibility: ‘making sense’ of phenomena adding: not reproducing, but re-describing, adding ‘text’ making the strange familiar: as ‘a case of’ ‘deepen’ and ‘broaden’ understanding (‘through the lens of’) BUT Whose plausibility are we adding? Is ‘deeper’ and ‘broader’ necessarily better? Or just different? THE STIRLING INSTITUTE OF EDUCATION

9. [2] interpretation or critique? interpretative: offering alternative interpretations critical: offering better interpretations ↓ on the assumptions that ‘first person’ accounts may be distorted as a result of the social position of actors a difference, therefore, between adding and replacing interpretation and different view of plausibility different relationship between theoriser and theorised: - promoting reflection and learning (trust in people’s interpretations) - promoting emancipation (distrust in people’s interpretations) [see Biesta, in press: “A new logic of emancipation”] both: making the strange familiar THE STIRLING INSTITUTE OF EDUCATION

10. [3] making the strange familiar = bringing what is not known or understood into the sphere of what is known and understood ↓ as basis for (better) action or: making the familiar strange: a different role for theorising Foucault modern Enlightenment: power versus knowledge “a tradition that assumes that knowledge can only exist where power relations are suspended” (Foucault) ‘postmodern Enlightenment: power/knowledge versus power/knowledge “In what is given to us as universal, necessary, obligatory, what place is occupied by whatever is singular, contingent, and the product of arbitrary constraints?” (Foucault) THE STIRLING INSTITUTE OF EDUCATION

11. “eventalisation” ↓ “a breach of self-evidence” constructing ‘a polygon of intelligibility’ around singular events not to deepen understanding, but to pluralise and complicate ↓ shift from ‘adding plausibility’ to ‘adding interpretation’ [adding implausibility?] Is that ‘useful’? Is it useful to bring about a situation “in which people no longer know what they do”? ↓ can spur people into action, not based on a (deeper) understanding of what is going on, but by an acknowledgement that something else might be going on → a different form of ‘liberation’ THE STIRLING INSTITUTE OF EDUCATION

12. FORMS AND FUNCTIONS OF ‘AUTONMOUS THEORISING’ ↓ HE ‘scholarship’ a simple point: autonomous theorising can generate re-descriptions of educational phenomena and processes re-descriptions, because educational reality always already comes described in a particular way showing that it is possible to see things differently (pluralisation) - e.g., that ‘learning to learn’ is a strategy to empower students or a form of neo-liberal governmentality - e.g., that assessment can be seen as judging learning ‘outcomes’ or as producing such outcomes ↓ THE STIRLING INSTITUTE OF EDUCATION

13. these are not empirical claims (i.e., not true/false), but ‘conceptual options’ ↓ to highlight the choices implied in particular descriptions ↓ such ‘description’ make particular ways of thinking, doing and being possible, and other ways difficult or impossible (see, e.g., the impact of ‘new language of learning’ and the ‘learnification’ of education) ↓ the “division of the sensible” (Rancière) ↓ “what is capable of being apprehended by the senses” ↓ not epistemological or phenomenological issue, but political (the “politics of aesthetics”) THE STIRLING INSTITUTE OF EDUCATION

14. [intermezzo] police: “an order of the visible and the sayable that sees that a particular activity is visible and another is not, that this speech is understood as discourse and another as noise” not system versus lifeworld, but all inclusive, i.e., everything has a place (as included or included-as-excluded) politics: “the mode of acting that perturbs this arrangement” and does so with reference to equality “an activity antagonistic to policing: whatever breaks with the tangible configuration whereby parties and aprts are defined by a presupposition that, by definition, has no place in that configuration” “it makes visible what had no business being seen, and makes heard a discourse where once there was only a place for noise” THE STIRLING INSTITUTE OF EDUCATION

15. the re-descriptions generated by autonomous theorising can have political effects, but they do not stem from a deeper, higher, or better insight a topological or horizontal approach to emancipation, not deep versus superficial or true versus false * * * THE STIRLING INSTITUTE OF EDUCATION

16. CONCLUDING REMARKS – POINTS FOR DISCUSSION [1] by identifying the possible roles for theory in HE research and scholarship we can characterise and appreciate the current situation but also identify areas for development [2] Does this indeed help us to understand the role of theory in HE scholarship better? (deeper? differently?) [3] Highlighting the political importance of theory, rather than (just) seeing theory in cognitive terms. THE STIRLING INSTITUTE OF EDUCATION

17. [4] Implied in my talk is a critical view of particular forms of critical/emancipatory theory. Should HE research, scholarship and theory aim to enlighten or to interrupt? [5] The question of disciplinarity and interdisciplinarity. What are the resources for theorising in/on (higher) education? the Anglo-American versus the Continental construction [6] What is special/distinctive about HE research and scholarship? Its social organisation? Or more? for more information see www.gertbiesta.com e-mail: gert.biesta@stir.ac.uk THE STIRLING INSTITUTE OF EDUCATION

18. some relevant references (papers available on request): Biesta, G.J.J. (in press). A new ‘logic’ of emancipation: The methodology of Jacques Ranciere. Educational Theory. Biesta, G.J.J. (in press). Towards a new ‘logic’ of emancipation: Foucault and Rancière. In R. Glass et al. (eds), Philosophy of Education 2008. Urbana-Champaign, IL: Philosophy of Education Society. Biesta, G.J.J. (2008). Encountering Foucault in lifelong learning. In K. Nicoll & A. Fejes (eds), Foucault and lifelong learning: governing the subject (pp. 193-205). London/New York: Routledge. THE STIRLING INSTITUTE OF EDUCATION