Abstract
Educational research is repeatedly confronted with the question of its relevance. Current interpretations of relevance narrowly focus on outcomes and impact of research. In this essay, we propose an alternative, ontological conceptualization of relevance, arguing that more is at stake than outcomes and impact. We characterize the ontology of education and learning in terms of people’s meaningful movements in an always changing world and propose that relevance of educational research resides in what we call “ontological synchronization”—continuous attunement to what is happening and matters at hand, and what future is being generated, including what values and judgments researchers themselves perpetuate in society. Such synchronization, we conclude, hinges on a disciplinary and ethical commitment to principles of actuality and generativity. We discuss what such conceptualization of relevance implies for educational research.
Highlights
Teachers, students, parents, policymakers, and other professionals care about education as the key to better positions for young and old in a more just society
Inspired by critical perspectives in philosophy and the sociology of science, we propose an approach that we call ontological synchronization
Educational research is concerned with an ontology in motion—with transitions over time, which can be as small as learning a new word, as long and wide as collective development of practices across generations, and as large as a global transition to online education due to the outbreak of a pandemic
Summary
We propose that what is key in the ontology of education is the human and natural world as it is and is becoming. The idea of learning and education as concerning meaningful movements in motion (which we abbreviate as MMM) along with multiple positions, purposes, and emergent potential (PPP) is our synthesis of many scholars’ and our own views Both Dewey (1915/2013, 1916, 1938) and Vygotsky (1980) described learning and development as a process starting from particular positions (e.g., a child of a specific age, with certain interests and capacities, located in some family situation, within a larger social system that is stratified in certain ways) and always moving into specific animated directions (e.g., through guidance of parents or teachers). This shows how educational research itself is part of the ontology: It identifies in its own present and context what seems to matter for the future of people and societies
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