Knowledge and Epistemology in Scholarship, Practice and Policy: Research-as-Science and Research-as-Project

Abstract

This chapter continues to set the scene for this volume by returning to the fundamental question of epistemology. How can we informatively categorise the forms of research that currently seek to build knowledge and inform education and social work ? What vocabulary do we have that enables us to describe the different kinds of knowledge built and made available by different kinds of research ? Drawing on Heap’s (1992, Multidisciplinary perspectives on literacy research) distinction between ‘research-as-science’ and ‘research-as-project’ it discusses some fundamental features of different configurations of the ‘epistemology of science in practice’. The core argument put forward is that choices of research methodology and design both reflect and reinforce anew scientific and project choices. The chapter concludes by showing that choices of methodology and design shape the emerging knowledge, shape the relationships between the researchers, the participants, the knowledge and the users of that knowledge.