Educational Research Undone: The Postmodern Embrace

"This is a provocative, important book. It moves the discourses of postmodernism and deconstructionism to new levels of insight and analysis. Authors Stronach and MacLure perform a major service to the field, showing how these complex discourses can be fitted to the concrete practices of educational research and pedagogy. In so doing they set new goals and priorities for the next generation of educational research and theory"
- Norman K Denzin, College of Communications Scholar, Distinguished Professor of Communication, Research Professor of Sociology, Criticism and Interpretive Theory, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

"As intelligent a hearing as postmodernism is likely to receive."
- Professor Ernie House, School of Education, University of Colorado at Boulder.

This book is the first educational research text in the UK to come to terms with postmodernism and deconstruction, connecting these emerging problematics of 'representation' to issues in philosophy, research methodology, and policy critique, and both providing and criticising its own examples. The authors draw on literary theory, anthropology, and sociology in order to construct alternative ways of reading and writing educational research, claiming that it is with a 'reformed inheritance' that such research can best address the condition of postmodernity as well as the positive and negative aspects of postmodernism. The book will appeal to educational and social researchers, as well as to research students.

Formerly Professor of Education at the University of Stirling, and Lecturer at the Centre for Applied Research in Education (CARE), University of East Anglia, Ian Stronach is Research Professor of Education at The Manchester Metropolitan University. He has a general interest in qualitative research approaches and policy critique, and is Editor of the British Educational Research Journal.

Maggie MacLure is Reader in Education in the School of Education and Professional Development at the University of East Anglia. Her research interests include discourse analysis, teacher identity and qualitative methodology. She is the UK Regional Editor of The International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education.