Education researchers as bricoleurs in the creation of sustainable learning environments
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Date
2014
Authors
Mahlomaholo, Sechaba
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Faculty of Education, University of the Free State
Abstract
Higher education has, to date, been unable to provide effective and lasting solutions
to challenges of education, because large sections thereof continue to search for
knowledge for its own sake. At best, they conduct responsive research, but on a small
scale they reduce the complexity that is education to a neat unilinear process which
can be studied by individual researchers in isolation. Hence, I propose the adoption
of bricolage as the perspective that will better enable us to respond to the challenges
mentioned above. I argue for a multi-layered and multi-perspectival research
approach, conducted by teams of researchers in collaboration with participants
who emerge from the research process as co-researchers. This research approach
incorporates aspects of the eight moments in research, namely the traditional
qualitative, modernity, blurred genres, crisis of representation, postmodernity,
post-experimentalism, methodologically contested representation, and the current
fractured futures. Using data from our research team, I show how we have
operationalised bricolage. Based on the positive educational outcomes and findings
of this project, I come to the conclusion that, as higher-education bricoleurs, we are
better able to respond to the complexity of education in a coherent, logical, focused
and original manner.
Description
Keywords
Collaborative research, Bricolage, Higher education
Citation
Mahlomaholo, S. (2014). Education researchers as bricoleurs in the creation of sustainable learning environments. Perspectives in Education, 32(4), 171-183.