Methodology and Interpretive Procedures in Educational Research: risk, imagination and reflexivity

Methodology and Interpretive Procedures’ acknowledges the vital importance of methodology as I construct a discourse that examines discourses. Through Ball (1994) this paper considers methodological terms such as critical, analyst, risk , imagination , reflexive and reflective. Accepting that the naming of any field is contestable therefore risky, the educational field of focus is ‘the arts’. The discussion raises questions about institutional thought, organisational limits, and ways of analysing the discursive practices of which Michel Foucault speaks. Also raised are political issues surrounding the constitution of knowledge, including normalising assumptions in discourses of art education, as I seek a Nietzschean historical sense in educational research through a demystification of poststructuralist theories within applied fields of educational practice. Outlining the Terrain The critical analyst must take risks, use imagination, but also be reflexive (Stephen Ball, 1994: 2). Stephen Ball (1994: 2) speaks of a methodological aim for the critical analyst – to analyse, take risks, and be imaginative and reflexive when interrogating a field of knowledge. Ball uses these terms in context of the political economies of ‘market reforms’ in educational modes of policy and practice. My engagement with these terms is in the field of ‘the arts’ in educational research. This paper acknowledges the vital importance of methodology as I construct a discourse that examines discourses. The approach to methodology in any research project discloses the approach to ‘knowledge’, and therein lies the knowledge-politics through which the field of interest may be adduced. Posing some research examples in the educational field of ‘the arts’, particularly visual arts, and engaging the field through poststructuralist methodologies, the discussion scrutinises the terms used by Ball: critical, risk , imagination, reflexive. The procedure undertaken has inherent risks tracing through it. In foregrounding poststructuralism and the arts I am acknowledging the risk of ‘naming’ educational/research/cultural/political arenas that are both marginalised and profiled at one and the same time; they are both given undue attention in educational debates as they are both silenced. From what ‘ground’ does the attention or silencing speak? That is the acute angle of my interest. Naming and categorisations, in themselves, serve to demarcate boundaries, borders and limits; they lend order, tidyup, offer seeming clarity to a social, educational or political situation. Thus, as mu ch as raising questions about ‘the arts’ in education as a research field, this paper also raises questions about institutional thought, organisational limits, and ways of archiving and analysing the discursive formations of which Michel Foucault speaks (s ee in particular Foucault, 1994: 31-39). Also raised are political issues surrounding the constitution of knowledge in educational practice and research, including normalising assumptions in dominant discoursal practices, as I seek a Nietzschean historical sense to the present terrain of ‘the arts’ in education.