NIS International Research-to-Practice Conference

Inspirational Speakers

Keynote Speakers

David Bridges

David Bridges, MA (Oxon) MA, PhD (London) Hon D.Univ (Open University) is a Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences (UK), Overseas Fellow of the Lithuanian Academy of Social Sciences, Professor Emeritus at the University of East Anglia, and Emeritus Fellow of St Edmund’s and of Homerton College, Cambridge.

A philosopher of education by training, Prof. Bridges has nevertheless developed an extensive programme of empirically based research, and a lot of his recent writing discusses philosophical problems in educational research. He was for six years a council member of the British Education Research Association and represented the UK on the council of the European Educational Research Association. He is an Honorary Vice President of the Philosophy of Education Society of Great Britain. He has worked in many different international settings including Vietnam, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Iran, Ethiopia (for 27 years), Lithuania, South Africa, Norway and Guyana, and has been working in Kazakhstan over the last five years both with Nazarbayev University Graduate School of Education and with Nazarbayev Intellectual Schools, of which he is a board member. His recent edited publication, Educational Reform and Internationalisation: The case of Kazakhstan celebrates and is the product of this two-way collaboration.

VIII NIS International Conference, 27-28 October 2016: Symposium

Research, criticality and research ethics

This contribution will briefly outline the main areas of concern addressed in ethical codes such as those developed by NIS and KERA and then raise some questions about the place of criticality in the conduct and reporting of research. It will focus on (i) protecting teachers from the critical gaze? (ii) protecting policy makers from the critical gaze? (iii) under what conditions can the educational community attend to critique? (iv) ethical codes, situated judgement and intellectual virtue. Consideration of intellectual virtue will, however, remind us that one of the primary objects for the researcher’s critical attention is their own work.