GENEALOGICAL METHOD IN EDUCATIONAL RESEARCH: STRATEGIES AND STEPS

This paper explores the issues involved in designing a genealogical study arising out of a contemporary educational issue and the contributions such a study can make to educational researches. Using Foucauldian genealogy, it argues that power and knowledge are interrelated. Regarding this interrelation between power and knowledge, educational knowledge and practice can not be neutral. So, they necessary to be seen as, simultaneously, products and agents of power hubs. But a serious challenge encounters with this approach is validity. When a method can be defined with its steps and strategies, it can be formulated and its validity can be warranted. This article’s endeavor is formulating this research method by defining its strategies and steps in educational area. The first step of a genealogical research is relating the research problem to the power and subject. This step appropriates topic for genealogical method and its philosophical presuppositions. The second step of a genealogical research program is applying the reversement principle for the research topic. Regarding this principle, the researcher tries to reverse the existent meaning relations of the topic and see it from a deconstructed aspect. We should provide a counter-hypothesis for the topic concerned. Problematizing the topic is another stage. In this phase, researcher should attempt to challenge with common views about research topic and try to find their contradictions. Afterwards, the researcher should specify the relations between power and subject which occur in this topic. This step would be accompanied with the data which gathered from former stages. Then we should sketch an elementary schema of power-subject relations network and complete it by searching history about descents and re-emerges of the topic. At the end, we attain a comprehensive view about our problem, via a complicated network of power-knowledge-subject interactions in our topic. The genealogical research has some special identification. So there are some educational problems which are more adapted with these identifications. We can use genealogy as a method for these problems: Challenging normative educational concepts, Challenging educational politics and Investigating hidden philosophy of education.