Re-presenting, performing critical/post-critical research realities

The aim of this paper is to focus on the relations between theory and research methods in educational research by mapping out our own research journeys. The paper arises out of a plenary talk at a 'Theory Workshop' (13-15 May 2016) that the Australian Association for Educational Research facilitated with Griffith University in Brisbane. This introductory talk attempted to create the space for 'opening up' discussion about the complex relations between theory and methods, and to show how these complex relations have been realised in our own, very different, researcher trajectories. It was a 'contradictory-performance'-we conducted a dialogue, invited interruptions, meandered from the central issue of theory-method nexus, talked past one another, worked with a chaotic PowerPoint presentation (slides from which are included here) and so on. We wanted the talk to be messy and, in both its form and contents, to be an invitation to others to engage in similar ways during the weekend. We were also interested in connecting and disconnecting with some of the recent debates in education research, for example on experimental practices, performativity, new materiality, and post-qualitative research. Drawing on these debates and on our own research work, we wanted to create the space for considering our research in terms of their disjunctive 'journeys' and in terms of the consequences (and therefore to think about the purposes of research, and relatedly the purposes of education) of this contradictory work. This article is a reworked version of this talk-but we have tried to keep its open 'feel' in the hope of inviting other conversations about, and connections with and between, theory and methods.