Critical Dispositions: Evidence and Expertise in Education

As demonstrated through examples from critical intellectuals and artists outside the field of education, this current proliferation of specific, autonomous fields of inquiry and practice marks a much deeper ambivalence about our contemporary moment and how we understand it. Following Bourdieu and other theorists, Dimitriadis argues that educational researchers and practitioners today must be increasingly self-reflexive about the positions they take up in various fields of inquiry, what they allow us to see and to understand, what they blind us to. This kind of self-reflexivity, however, is becoming increasingly difficult today as material demands and dislocations are forcing educators to occupy particular fields in more specific ways. Unpacking this tension and offering alternative "thinking tools" is at the core of this volume.