Writing in the Margin explores the practise of reading and writing in philosophy of education and education theory, addressing what is means to do research and evaluating to what extent the empirical and non-empirical distinction is helpful in educational research. Drawing on their own research, theoretical and philosophical sources, the authors investigate the important issue of what it means to read and write when there is no prescribed structure. With contributions from international scholars in the field of philosophy of education, this book is globally applicable and will be a valuable guide for postgraduate students and academics who are reading or writing in the field of education.

Amanda Fulford is Head of Postgraduate Programmes in the Institute of Childhood and Education and Associate Principal Lecturer in Education Research at Leeds Trinity University, UK.

Naomi Hodgson is Visiting Research Fellow in the Laboratory for Education and Society, KU Leuven, Belgium, and Visiting Lecturer at Liverpool Hope University, UK.

Part I:

1. Research, Researching and the Researched
2. Research at the Crossroads
3. Educational Inquiry and Philosophy of Education

Part II:

Illustrates the multiple ways in which non-empirical research can be undertaken in education, as outlined in Part I. It will do this by presenting a number of examples of ongoing research by international scholars and practitioners in the field, each addressing a different substantive area of policy or practice, and each illustrating a different mode of analysis.

Part III

This final part of the text is a critical reflection on Part II. It has three broad aims:

1. To show how theoretical/philosophical writing is concerned with policy and practice. This will be demonstrated with reference to the contributions from Part II and by analysing to what extent these might be arranged/classified to make more explicit the nature of any difference, and how such thinking might be productive for thinking about education;
2. To say that theoretical/philosophical research cannot be separated from the practice (and the practise) of philosophical reading and writing;
3. To show that the practices of reading and writing that we illustrate are ones that position the researcher and the researched in a particular way: they open up a starting point for new ways of thinking both about the self and about education.