Theory, Epistemology and Methodology

Educational research always takes place within situations marked by unequal power relations, normative assumptions and sociocultural expectations. Therefore, examining how knowledge production is dependent on and reflects contextual factors is paramount. Our research is guided by epistemological sensitivity towards the inherent cultural values in theories, methodologies and methods and towards issues of power reflected in institutional structures, funding requirements and the relationship between researchers and their interlocutors in the educational field.

As the postcolonial problematization of Eurocentrism and ableist and racist epistemologies becomes all the more evident in a world shaped by migration and globalization, the Department specifically addresses the tension between globally dominant research designs and locally or regionally rooted epistemologies. Our research concerns, on the one hand, discursively hegemonic epistemologies, and on the other hand, curricula and instructional technologies in teaching materials, which are usually designed to reproduce national identity and superiority by producing the culturally shaped notions of the respective "good child" and thus also of the deviant child.

The appropriate response to these challenges does not lie in the search for an Archimedean point of research but in the consideration of local or national epistemological peculiarities and a variety of research methodologies and methods whose further development and interconnection are particularly explored and applied in the research projects.

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