Faculty Publications
The Stories Educational Researchers Tell About Themselves
Document Type
Article
Journal/Book/Conference Title
Educational Researcher
Volume
26
Issue
5
First Page
4
Last Page
11
Abstract
In 1990, in the pages of Educational Researcher, McKenna, Robinson, and Miller and Edelsky engaged in an intensely argued debate over the research on language instruction. In this article, I revisit this important exchange because it remains the most important starting point we have for an attempt to characterize and clarify what is behind the increasing fragmentation of the educational research community. My claim is that the balkanization of our profession is a result of people engaging different vocabularies to tell different stories about research and the work of researchers. In examining this claim, I also examine what happened with the different vocabularies used to discuss qualitative research over the course of the 1980s and early 1990s. Finally, I end with a brief comment about what the proliferation of different vocabularies and different stories might mean for our profession.
Department
Department of Educational Psychology and Foundations
Original Publication Date
12-1-1997
DOI of published version
10.3102/0013189X026005004
Recommended Citation
Smith, John K., "The Stories Educational Researchers Tell About Themselves" (1997). Faculty Publications. 3973.
https://scholarworks.uni.edu/facpub/3973
