Conference Agenda

Educational research as well es its (institutional) organisation, methods, technologies, approaches and practices are highly diverse. The workshop invites reflection on the academic treatment of central education-related thematic fields, objects and concepts from a perspective informed by Science and Technology Studies (STS; Bammé 2009; Felt et al 2014). Research on educational research is part of academic as well as disciplinary self-observation. Overall, there is a lot of (tacit) knowledge about epistemic traditions, histories, representatives, communication platforms (journals, congresses, associations, universities), methods, approaches, responsibilities, topics and issues at national and European level and also knowledge about national evaluation systems that have an impact on knowledge production on education (Whitty & Furlong 2017; Keiner & Hofbauer 2014; Oancea 2013, Wyrne 2020; Elven 2022). The workshop will aim in two directions: On the one hand, we are striving to strengthen research networks. It is striking that most of the studies come from the northern and western regions and that, despite a large amount of research on the status of the respective “sciences of education”, this research is not yet well connected.

On the other hand, we want to address the reciprocal relationship between educational research, its topics and STS. The aim is to explore the theoretical means of STS with regard to the educational research 'inside' and 'outside' relationship to social, political, pedagogical or even technological developments and hence, social responsibility of educational research. This includes, for example, research methods and organisation, practices of reception and citation, but also translations and the resulting shifts in meaning in international communication and circulation of ideas (Bourdieu, 2002). Equally interesting is the use of actor-network theory within educational research (e.g. Fenwick & Edwars 2011) and the consideration of technologies as equal actors in knowledge production. The reception of feminist philosophy of science (Haraway 1988) or postcolonial STS (Verran 2002) in educational research can be just as interesting as the feminist-inspired as well as postcolonial, power-critical view of one's own history or practices of science (e.g. Chilisa 2005, Lather 1992). Last but not least, sociomaterial and -cultural practices and technologies of educational knowledge production can be illuminated, which themselves were used as aisles of translation (Latour 1999; Collins, Evans & Gorman 2007). The STS emphasises the practical fabrication, ambiguity and contingency of 'education', 'upbringing', 'learning' etc. when comparing different conceptualisations and science-based organisation as well as when considering their circulation and historical development, which is particularly challenging in international communication.

Since STS have shown that scientific methods, as well as the circulation and transmission of knowledge, “make social realities and social worlds” (Law & Urry 2004, p. 390), light must also be shed on the loci of production. In addition to the laboratory as the classic subject of STS (Latour & Woolgar 1979; Knorr-Cetina 1981), educational research and STS are also be particularly interested in organisations where research and education are intertwined: Universities in particular are contexts where practices of knowledge production, mediation and education, transmission and implementation, and recently also public communication, overlap and interpenetrate. Educational research needs to take on the reflection and analysis of the organisation of this interplay from a science-cultural perspective, because it is not only ideas of the future or technological and predictive knowledge that is generated here, but also schemes of interpretation, orders of justification and practical responsibilities (Wagner 1999; Elven 2021). Beyond the university, however, the focus must be broadened to the interconnections of the entire diverse educational system – not only because it is a central infrastructure for the dissemination and "everydayisation" of knowledge, but also because thinking about and doing research is co-produced here (from school experiments to the mode of using scientifically based arguments.