CALL FOR APPLICANTS
The Lecture Series ’Rangkang Manyang’ VII
Understanding Educational Settings through Critical Research Approach
Fasilitator/Trainer:
1. Dr. Mieke Lopezs Cardozo (Assistant Professor at Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands)
2. Dr. Ritesh Shah (Lecturer at Faculty of Education, University of Auckland, New Zealand)
Monday, 9 December 2013 from 08.30-17.30
ICAIOS Seminar Room, Darussalam
Introduction:
The choice on research approaches and methodologies is a longstanding debate among researchers. They stand between using deductive or inductive line of reasoning to answer for a social reality. Traditionally, research enquiry has been guided by a quest for a universal theory of knowledge that could be seen as absolute and certain. Based on logical positivism, knowledge, specifically scientific knowledge, is founded on what can be empirically experienced, measured and tested. However, postmodernism suggests that reality is only a social construct, and is founded on language, power relations and motivations in the formation of ideas and beliefs about what is true and real.
As an attempt to provide a discussion venue for this longstanding debate, ICAIOS is planning to conduct a one-day workshop on critical educational research. This workshop is important as it provides opportunity for researchers, especially those who are concerned with critically examining educational issues, to reflect and discuss various ways of conducting inquiry within the discipline. It will help prospective or/and current educational researchers reflect on their own conceptions of how the social world is constructed and then consider what it means for their scholarship. The workshop will provide opportunity to explore how one might go about asking some key questions such as:
- By whom and how are decisions in educational policymaking made and how does this translate into practice (or not)?;
- What role do ground-level actors in education (teachers, parents, students, administrators) have in shaping outcomes that are observed; and
- How might education both reflect, and help to shape broader social, political, cultural and economic processes and practices present within society?
This workshop will suggest that critical theoretical research approaches which are founded on explicit acknowledgement of the impacts that historical settlements, political, economic and social structures/forces, and cultural ideas and practices have on what is observed in both educational policymaking and educational practice present a way of exploring these questions. At the same time the workshop will move from these conceptual questions to the pragmatics of undertaking critical research in education, covering issues such as: ethical dilemmas underpinning such work, the art and practice of qualitative methods in educational research, and intercultural communications and understandings when doing educational research.
Participants:
The expected number of participants will be 20 persons maximum.
1. Social Science researchers, lecturers and postgraduate students from across the disciplines (politics, religious studies, international relations/development, education, economics, sociology, geography, anthropology)
2. Teachers
3. Members of relevant NGOs
4. Representatives from Ministry of Education and Ministry of Religious Affairs
Participants are required to fill the application form attached. No scholarship or funding support is available for this workshop. Participants are required to pay a registration fee in the amount of Rp. 100.000
Facilities:
1 x lunch, 2 x coffee break, and comfortable seminar room with air conditioning
Language: the workshop will be in English
Registration:
ICAIOS, Annex Building, Komplek Gedung PPISB Unsyiah, Darussalam, Banda Aceh or e-mail: info@acehresearch.org or contact Admin ICAIOS (Uli): 082365255500. Please return the application form along with the fees no later than 15:00 Aceh time, Friday, 5th of December 2013. Limited participants to 20 people.
