Educational research and the question(s) of time

David R. Cole, Mehri Mirzaei Rafe, Gui Ying Annie Yang-Heim

Research output: Chapter in Book / Conference PaperChapter

Abstract

During the COVID pandemic (2020–2) time stood still. Schools were shut. (Clearly, not all schools were shut, not everyone was lonely. These statements present a taste of the drama and time questions in education that were caused by the pandemic.) Socialising was banned. Teachers, children, and parents were isolated in their homes. Beyond a metaphor, the breaking of clock time, by which education is usually run, sent individuals spiralling off in multiple directions. People found isolation and a dead, lonely time, cut off from contacts and forced to learn alone. Others discovered a ‘holiday time’ as the novelty of not going to school and staying at home provided a break from the frequently grinding repetition that education can become. This book is figured at the emergence of the post-pandemic, and asks the question: What is the time dimension in educational research, and how does it equate to practice? Every chapter deals with this question differently, and this move sets up the fundamental malleability of time in education and research, even though the unnerving regularity of clock time in education tries its best to defy this very malleability. What is interesting and shall be pursued in this opening chapter, is that the forces that seek to reassert the domination of clock time in and through education post-pandemic, are at the same time challenged in this very procedure by the bottom-up perturbations of new online learning, lingering health concerns, an uncertain economic outlook, and, perhaps most disturbingly, climate change. This chapter is located at the fulcrum of these energetics and maps their internal tensions and potential.

Original languageEnglish
Title of host publicationEducational Research and the Question(s) of Time
EditorsDavid R. Cole, Mehri Mirzaei Rafe, Gui Y. Yang-Heim
Place of PublicationSingapore
PublisherSpringer Singapore
Pages1-16
Number of pages15
ISBN (Electronic)9789819734184
ISBN (Print)9789819734177
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 1 Jan 2024

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