Educational Research: The Importance and Effects of Institutional Spaces

Institutional spaces and places: what we do in them and what they do to us? Paul Smeyers, Marc Depaepe and Edwin Keiner have assembled a rich and varied collection, in which leading historians and philosophers of education bring much-needed critical attention to these matters. Covering the local and the universal, the concrete and the virtual, the metaphorical and the metaphysical, these essays challenge received assumptions and press questions of policy and practice in such a way as to chart new possibilities for educational research.


Paul Standish, Institute of Education, London, United Kingdom



If we consider that both 'education' and 'research' have become crucial myths in modern societies, the role and significance of 'educational research' cannot be underestimated. Smeyers, Depaepe and Keiner present a collection of essays that illuminate the sometimes subtle effects of institutional spaces on the practices and meanings of educational research. The wide rangeof practices and contexts addressed in this volume as well the analytical depth of the contributions makes this volume a major reference for all scholars interested in the critical dissection of 'educational research' as a scholarly practice.

Marcelo Caruso, Humboldt Universität zu Berlin, Institut für Erziehungswissenschaften, Berlin, Germany

Prof. Dr. Edwin Keiner ist Hochschullehrer für Allgemeine Pädagagogik an der Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg.