No. 26 (14): The methodological outlook in education: views and perspectives. January-June 2023

Few fields have such a dynamic presence in social science as that of education. As a field that articulates but is in turn articulated by several disciplines, and instituted as transversally common to all social phenomena, the epistemes that give rise to it extend, contract, hybridize and transmute at an astonishing speed and with an unusual capacity for innovation.

It is precisely this continuous and intense input and assimilation of objects-outlooks that imperiously demands the need to draw up a state of the art, a stocktaking of sorts in the here and now that accounts for the most significant dilemmas, vicissitudes and pragmatics around its construction, its empirical treatment and its possible drifts.

From there, and considering the premise that every research problem stems from a number of positions on what is considered problematic, enunciating how we know what we know and how the routes of dismantlement that turn phenomena into observable, understandable and explainable entities are formulated, we take it as a given that new problematizations in the field of education are not random or casual but, to the contrary, are constructed and determined by particular sets of epistemological principles and debates, as well as methodological treatments oriented and motivated by their own, exclusive conditions.

Thus, Issue 26 of Diálogos sobre Educación. Temas actuales en investigación educativa seeks to contribute to the construction of this snapshot and has been intended as a space that allows us to identify these debates and treatments, with a particular focus on the epistemological and methodological lines in current research agendas. This implies shifting the focus of our interest from the outcomes to the processes of production of knowledge. We know that without methodology there is no research, and that methodological decisions and operations express, implicitly or explicitly, epistemological positions, but these layers of our scientific work have not been sufficiently discussed. Although it should always be relevant to address methodology and epistemology, in times of change such as the one we are living in due to the Covid-19 pandemic it would be worthwhile to reflect critically on the frameworks we adopt for our research.

Coordinators: Rodrigo González Reyes – University of Guadalajara. Dorismilda Flores Márquez - La Salle University, Bajío.