Re-claiming Innovation: Advancing Critical Perspectives in Educational Research
A Special Issue for Early Career Researchers (ECRs) in Education
Editors: Seán Henry, Rowena Anthea Azada-Palacios and Audrey Bryan
In May 2022 the Irish Government’s Department of Further and Higher Education, Research, Innovation, and Science published Impact 2030: Ireland’s Research and Innovation Strategy. Central to this strategy is a commitment to strengthening Ireland’s reputation as ‘an Island of Innovation’ where research plays a role in developing the country’s ‘knowledge-based economy’ and its ‘long-term economic and social sustainability.’ Indeed, the development of ‘entrepreneurship and innovation skills’ is identified as a key objective of doctoral education in Ireland’s (2023) recently revised National Framework for Doctoral Education.
Beyond Ireland, the language of ‘innovation’ has become a dominant feature of research discourse over the last few years. Indeed, Dakka (2019) has situated ‘innovation’ within the wider, neoliberal policy discourse of higher education, where research becomes a tool to advance narrowly-construed economic ends that kowtow to the competitive demands of the free market (Giroux, 2014; Morley et al., 2017; MacDonald-Vemic & Portelli, 2020; Sims, 2020; Hil et al., 2022). In this context, it is understandable that critical scholarship (in education and further afield) should hesitate at endorsing this ‘innovative’ turn in research, and it is in response to the potential for such hesitation that this Call for Papers arises.
The purpose of this Special Issue is to foreground critical early career research that has the potential to reclaim the ‘innovative’ nature of inter/national education research against the deployment of ‘innovation’ within neoliberal policy discourses (in Ireland as elsewhere). In this sense, the Special Issue seeks to showcase national and international early career research that represents innovative ‘alternatives’ to theorising and/or conducting critical research in education, beyond the ‘innovations’ of the free market economy.
In doing so, the Special Issue particularly welcomes submissions from early career researchers whose work has the potential to innovate research around, but not limited to, the following issues:
● Educational spaces (including under-explored educational spaces)
● Critical perspectives on artificial intelligence, technology, digital transformation and education
● Rethinking conflict in education
● New curricular developments, reforms and innovations in education
● Environmental and ecological justice in education
● Global educational governance
● Critical methodological innovations in educational research
● Critical theoretical innovations in educational research (e.g. posthuman, decolonial, etc.)
● The future(s) of education.
About the Journal
Irish Educational Studies is an international, refereed journal publishing manuscripts on a range of topics relevant to education by drawing on the full spectrum of disciplines that feed into educational theory and practice; this includes anthropology, sociology, psychology, history, economics, philosophy, politics and curriculum studies. The journal welcomes papers that draw on a range of research methodologies, with articles that have a critical edge, making links between the local and global and influences on practice across all sectors of education – from early childhood education, primary and post-primary schooling through to higher education – of particular interest.
Early Career Researchers (ECRs)
This Special Issue of Irish Educational Studies is the second issue of the journal devoted exclusively to the scholarship of Early Career Researchers (ECRs) working in the field of education. IES and its associated academic organisation the Educational Studies Association of Ireland (ESAI) have a remit to support and promote ECRs. For the purposes of this Special Issue, we define ECRs as current postgraduate students or researchers who have submitted their doctoral thesis within the last 10 years or equivalent for those with periods of leave.
This Special Issue accepts manuscripts in the form of an original research article where the first author is an early researcher at the time of submission (additional coauthors from any career stage are welcome).
The manuscript must report new and previously unpublished research (not to be considered for publication elsewhere).
Submission Instructions
Interested authors should submit a 300-500 word abstract, six keywords, six references and a brief biographical statement (150 words or less) via the following link.
Deadline for submission of abstracts: July 5th, 2024
Successful authors will be invited by July 31st, 2024 to submit a full draft for review by December 31st, 2024 through the IES online submission system. All papers will be subject to the usual blind reviewing and refereeing processes.
Full papers are expected to be no more than 8000 words, inclusive of references. Please refer to the IES journal website for full ‘instructions for authors’.
Please direct initial inquiries to Seán Henry and Rowena Anthea Azada-Palacios at: Sean.Henry@edgehill.ac.uk razada@ateneo.edu
