Exploring a multitude of spaces in education and educational research

© Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht 2013. Smeyers and Depaepe argue that 'space' is potentially a very rich notion: it has references to society, to interpretation and action; it allows for specificity such as in 'mathematical space' and invites to take up (challenging) opportunities and what is not yet conceived; finally it admits to situate (individual) research projects. Different meanings of 'space' can be distinguished such as what this means at the level of the practice of education for example in a classroom, at the level of the institutions, and last but not least when the focus is on the academic discipline of education. Within the educational research cultures new developments can be observed: these include blurring the boundaries between research and technique, steering by results, radical shifts in communicative spaces, the appearing of distorting output indicators, and new criteria for promotion.