Educational Research: The Importance and Effects of Institutional Spaces

1. Exploring a multitude of spaces in education and educational research; Paul Smeyers and Marc Depaepe.- 2. American democracy and Harold D. Lasswell: Institutional spaces of 'failure' and 'success', present and past; Lynda Stone.- 3. The power of the parochial in shaping the American system of Higher Education; David Labaree.- 4. Crossing the Atlantic to gain knowledge in the field of psycho-pedagogy: The 1922 mission of Ovide Decroly and Raymond Buyse to the USA and the travel diary of the latter; Marc Depaepe, Lieven d'Hulst, Frank Simon.- 5. The emergence of institutional educational spaces for young children: In pursuit of more controllability of education and development as part of the long-term growth of educational space in history; Pauline Schreuder and Jeroen Dekker.- 6. A different training, a different practice. Infant care in Belgium in the interwar years in the city and in the countryside; Pieter Dhondt.- 7. Disability, rehabilitation & the Great War: Making space for silence in the History of Education; Pieter Verstraete.- 8. Interpretation: The space of text; Richard Smith.- 9. Exploring educational research as a multi-layered discursive space; Stijn Mus.- 10. The spaces of mathematics: Dynamic encounters between local and universal; Karen François, Kathleen Coessens, Jean Paul van Bendegem.- 11. The classroom space: A problem or a mystery?; Ian Munday.- 12. Spaces and places in the virtual university; Nicholas C. Burbules.- 13. Material contexts and creation of meaning in virtual places: Web 2.0 as a space of educational research; Lynn Fendler and Karin Priem. 14. From entrepreneurialism to innovation: Research, critique, and the Innovation Union; Naomi Hodgson.- 15. About the Authors.- Index. ¿

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 range of 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 Universitat zu Berlin, Institut fur Erziehungswissenschaften, Berlin, Germany