糖心传媒

00:12 Kate:

Today we are speaking to Professor Michael Crossley, who is a distinguished scholar in the field of comparative and international education, with a career spanning several decades of teaching, research and consultancy work across the globe. Professor Crossley has contributed extensively to educational development in diverse contexts, including England, Australia, Papua New Guinea, Kenya, China and the Caribbean.

His leadership roles include serving as the president of the British Association for International and Comparative Education and as editor of the influential journal Comparative Education. Professor Crossley’s work is widely recognised for his focus on educational policy transfer theory, qualitative and contextually sensitive research methodologies, and educational and environmental development in small island states.

Have a look at www.smallstates.net. Michael has published extensively in CIE, has supervised 50 doctoral students to completion, is a long time supporter of early career researchers, and is the founding editor for the Bristol Studies in Comparative and International Education book series. 

Michael, thanks again so much for speaking with me. Your work is so expansive. So, I was wondering if you could tell me a bit about your start in education as a teacher and what it is that got you interested in international education.

01:47 Michael:

Thank you, Kate.  It’s really nice to do this and I’m doing it in the spirit of your efforts to support early career researchers in 糖心传媒, so it’s a pleasure to do so. You’re making me go back in time with that question, to when I was an early career researcher. After my undergraduate degree, I started teaching in secondary schools. I was a geography teacher, and that was about seven years of teaching experience in the UK. That experience led me to be quite critical of what I saw was happening in educational research in the 1970s, we’re talking about. And in those days, it seemed to me that educational research really missed the lived realities of practicing teachers. It tended to be more positivistic in nature, tended to be dominated by educational psychology more than any other discipline.

Um, and as a practitioner, I began to feel that there must be better ways for researchers to document what it was like to be a practicing teacher, someone trying to implement policies that were developed by others, from the political arena and, policymakers and, indeed, other researchers.

Um, that made me interested in doing further study. And I took a master’s of education, a master of arts degree, actually, at the Institute of Education in London, 1972, 73, when I focused upon comparative education and also education in what were called developing countries in those days. In doing that, I found I was working with lots of people who were involved in implementing educational reform around the world, and particularly people who came from the Pacific area, including Papua New Guinea, and Tonga, other parts of what we call Oceania today. But I was a young scholar and they tended to be more senior people, doing their master’s degrees. And there was lots to learn from that process, but, at the heart of it was a recognition that they were seeing the same sort of problems that, policies for educational reform seem to be imposed upon their education systems in ways that were, let’s say, difficult to implement, or maybe even impossible to implement, or too rapidly changed and promoted. That influenced my own work at the master’s level, but it led me eventually to think of doing a PhD that could give me time to look into those sorts of issues. And I was fortunate in 1979 to get a doctoral scholarship from Australia, which would enable me to go and live in Melbourne to work at La Trobe University.  La Trobe was the biggest comparative education research center at that time in Australia, and they had strong connections with the Pacific, and those strong connections gave me links to do fieldwork in Papua New Guinea, and that’s how I began my early career researcher role.

In Papua New Guinea, I connected practical experience as a practicing teacher and efforts to implement a curriculum reform initiative in Papua New Guinea driven by Australian, I’m putting my inverted commas around this word, Australian 鈥渆xperts鈥�.

Um, in other words, an externally inspired reform that was aimed following Western, if you like, fashions of the day to introduce school based curriculum development to the secondary schools of Papua New Guinea. And that took me directly into the work I’ve done ever since, which is challenging what I’ve labeled the uncritical international transfer of education policies and practice from one context to another, and particularly from the wealthier, well resourced Global North with Australia labeled as that into, yeah, the Global South as we use the term today, but in this case from, well, from the UK, a policy transferred into Australia and then transferred from Australia into Papua New Guinea, where the resources and the training of staff and the possibilities for implementation were very, very different and that’s a polite way of saying it. 

Context matters. Anyone who’s looked at my work ever since then will see some of those themes reflected in it.

06:43 Kate:

I was aware of this thinking, in your earlier work, from one of your earlier publications: The Qualitative Educational Research in Developing Countries: Current Perspectives, where you talk about the importance of context specific approaches and you caution against the uncritical adoption of Western research paradigms in these settings.

So I’m wondering if you could share how your understanding of the importance of local context has evolved and how this shapes educational researchers and policy makers?

07:21 Michael:

Well, another link to the earlier things I was saying, for my own doctoral research was to say, how can Educational research do more to capture those lived realities of practicing teachers.

That really took me into shaping and framing my own research in a qualitative mode. Building upon case studies of schools that had already been done, in the Western world. But my own doctoral research was one of the first detailed ethnographic case studies of educational reform in a Global South context in the southern highlands of Papua New Guinea.

But what I was trying to do there, trying to be a bit of the antidote for that more positivistic, statistical type of research that I’d felt, failed to capture the real problems of implementation in real schools, wherever that might be. So, you mentioned, some of my work on qualitative research, in developing countries as we’d labeled it in those days.

And we all know that those terms are questionable. And any of the repeated, new, phrases that we use are also questionable. The Global South, for instance, but yeah, we were writing on qualitative research in developing countries early on. And that, stemmed partly from my PhD and partly from collaboration with a good friend of mine called Graham Vullamy. Who traveled from the University of York to Papua New Guinea. We both found that we were using qualitative research approaches in rather original ways for the times and beginning to document innovation from the perspective of those at the grassroots level. And that led to further work, along those lines, and particularly connected to the, questioning the, uncritical international transfer of educational policy and practice. 

09:25 Kate:

Can you tell us about some of those innovative methodologies you were using? And as a side question, you mentioned that you think the term Global South is questionable. Can you talk a little bit more about that and tell me what you think it should be termed as? 

09:45 Michael:

Maybe I’ll start with the latter one. It’s not a particular focus on the phrase the Global South, it’s just every one of the generic terms that we, as researchers in all fields use, will have limitations. Limitations because of the generalisation built into those frames. On the other hand, those sorts of terms still are helpful for people to focus upon some of the key issues. That really requires our attention. So, Global South is the phrase that probably most people are comfortable at the moment with, but there are critics of that. But I, myself, I still find I use it and probably need to use it to be able to do the work that I’m doing. And so do many colleagues. All I’m saying is there will be critics of any term that we use, even if we move on and find another phrase um, to the qualitative approaches. I think to shortcut a little bit to bring things up to date now, where my work has been in, well, where I’m still working with so many colleagues around the world is connecting my ongoing methodological writing on qualitative research with notions of indigenous knowledge and perspectives from Global South and philosophies from the Global South. And given my interest in small island developing states, particularly from Oceania, where I’ve got so many good friends and talented colleagues who’ve been working with me and helping me to understand different oceanic methodologies and epistemologies, and my work is trying to connect their words their voices to the international methodological literature where possible.

11:44 Kate:

Do you think that in trying to create that connect, do you think that a completely different epistemic grounding is needed? It’s what some decolonial scholars call for because without this, we’re just going to reproduce the problems that we have been reproducing over the last, however many years. Since the seventies, if we have to take it from where you started. So what are your thoughts around that? 

12:14 Michael:

Hmm. That’s a good question. And these are the things that we all need to wrestle with today.

My work has had two themes. One, context matters running through it. And of course, that phrase context matters is mine, but the origins of it go really far back into the history of comparative education as a field with many of our sort of founding fathers talking about the importance of context that’s been there through and through. But the twist I put to it when I first started to turn it into the actual words context matters – context matters more than most policy makers and many researchers recognise in the contemporary world where things are moving faster. I sort of brought it up to date, by using those extra words around it.

A second thread that’s running through my work is bridging cultures and traditions. And that could mean bridging north and south as I’ve already been talking about. But it could also mean bridging policy and practice. It could also relate to bridging epistemological frameworks and positions. So I’m now coming to your question there.

I’m a little bit cautious around notions that we need a new way of looking at the world totally. In other words, shifting some sort of epistemological base as if we found a new magic bullet and way forward. And yet I’m a strong supporter and advocate of many contemporary epistemological challenges and developments, particularly those built into, what I call the contemporary decolonisation movement, especially as it works out in the field of comparative and international research in education. However, my point about bridging cultures and traditions has multiple dimensions to it but it also relates to bridging past scholarship with contemporary scholarship. And too often my current concerns build around seeing very new work that has great potential, ignoring what has happened in the past, ignoring some of the strengths of advances in the past, particularly in the field of comparative and international education, to the extent that either the problems or solutions or ways forward are sort of just reinvented with other words, but they鈥檙e still sort of dealing with similar issues and sometimes, moving forward in ways that are less helpful because we’ve lost some of the strengths we once had. So is bridging past and present and future thinking in constructive ways, not in ways that we get caught by the past ways that still open up really creative and new and challenging ways for the future.

But let’s be careful that we don’t throw the baby out with the bath water or that we do that too often. I’m still supportive of challenging disruptive ideas and developments. You know, very often contemporary methodological developments are certainly in the qualitative arena, are still trying to do things that will connect to the worldviews, the experience, the lived realities of those people on the ground, be it indigenous communities in Fiji or Namibia or whatever.

15:55 Kate:

I really like your thinking around, linking and bridging cultures and traditions and past scholarship and present scholarship. And I think I can extend that to our thinking within the decolonial field, how past scholarship within an indigenous way of knowing has definitely been overlooked and not even considered scholarship. And I think that also feeds into the problem that you’ve been speaking about, how contemporary, research methodologies sort of don’t acknowledge enough the work that was done before, so I’m thinking that with, the shifting of our epistemic grounding, you know, anchoring it to something, that we as a humanity share. Which for me, is the land. Um, I think that could be a way forward to create those bridges that you are calling for. What do you think about that? 

16:56 Michael:

Yeah, I think that this is the sort of healthy discussion that is great for the field of comparative and international research and education. And I would hope early career researchers get hold of these issues. Well, I know they are doing, but the more people that engage with these things in critical ways, the better.

Connected to this, I feel, especially if we’re talking about decolonialism and the contemporary decolonial debates, particularly post George Floyd, um, is increased recognition being needed on the theoretical front, too. Because while my work traditionally has looked at the uncritical international transfer of policy and practice, I then moved a decade or more ago, into the uncritical international transfer of research modalities. There’s a paper in 2014 where I was concerned and making a critique of, the critical international transfer of big data and all the assumptions that went along with that, which for me was bringing back positivistic science or the danger of bringing back positivistic science in rather a big new way.

And of course, that leads into AI and where we are today. But following that, and this has been the more recent area where I am currently working in, is the uncritical international transfer, particularly within our field, but beyond it, of theory. And when I found myself engaging with the contemporary decolonial debate, real concerns that too often decolonial theoretical constructs that have been developed in Western university thinking, let’s say, that’s rather than just Western context because that could be more global, are transferred rather uncritically across boundaries. Boundaries have been used in recent discussions in comparative education, so it’s probably worth using it there. Particularly from American, and I mean United States of American, positions and theoretical work on decolonisation in comparative education to the UK and Europe and beyond. There’s a healthy debate emerging now around decolonisation theory, and I think that debate needs supporting and needs engaging with in critical ways itself. By all our community, senior researchers, but especially early career researchers who really are in the vanguard of a lot of decolonial thinking. But I’d like to put into the pot, be critical of that at the same time as you’re developing it.

19:58 Kate:

Could you expand or give an example of a theory from the U.S that is being uncritically applied to decolonial work in U.K. universities, Europe, and beyond?

20:14 Michael:

Well um, I guess critical race theory is very strong and has American origins, but the issues that are being dealt with, let’s say, in the United States context, that have inspired a lot of that work and a lot of that work has great strengths to it. Those issues are not exactly the same here in the UK, and it’s very delicate, sort of tricky territory, but the point I’m making is that be careful, all of us, myself included, of transferring theoretical assumptions from that American type scholarship where it may well hold and be robust to analyses of those race related issues to a UK setting where it is different. 

21:06 Kate:

Yes

21:07 Michael:

And for me, that is still uncritical international transfer. But in this case of theories, so policy and practice, which has been the traditional stuff, methodological stuff that I’ve really found I’ve been deeply engaged in for some time now. And the theoretical thing, which I’m beginning to feel needs more challenge. Partly, you know, we live in an academic world where theory is seen as a bit of a gold standard. But I guess it’s my qualitative research sensitivities that have always been questioning theory and I’m beginning to sort of focus more upon that now. And that’s all in the interests of strengthening theory as well as strengthening attention to issues of policy and practice and implementation.

21:55 Kate:

For sure. I agree with you that theory should not be applied uncritically one context to another. And I think that if decolonial theory is followed, as it is proposed, as theory being practice or practice being theory where the one informs the other and if you are situating yourself in the context and the practice, praxis of that context, I think that’s a really good way to avoid that uncritical application of, a theory from, let’s just say the United States or from India to a context such as Namibia, for example. So I think that really positioning yourself in the context like you have been saying in your work for so many years, I think that is the key to avoiding that pitfall, which, as you have pointed out, we, many of us fall into. 

22:54 Michael:

This might be a good point just to go back a little bit to talking around 糖心传媒. Again, I’m trying to think of who might want to listen to this discussion. And it is for 糖心传媒 early career researchers, but 糖心传媒 community in general. The origins of 糖心传媒 go back to 1998 when the inaugural conference created the renamed society, but the society has a longer history, of course, that people can read about, but that history was the British Comparative in International Education Society, joining with BATROE, the British Association for Teachers and Researchers Overseas Education, or words to that effect. But those two societies came together in 1998. When we created 糖心传媒, and I was involved in that process, I think at that time I was vice chair of 糖心传媒 and then became chair in the year 2000. But, the link to our theoretical discussion just a moment ago is that what 糖心传媒 was trying to do there was to bridge two existing institutions.

One that had a bit more of a theoretical dimension and one that was more practical and, teacher education and policy and practice oriented. That’s the BATROE side and the BCIES. But ever since then, 糖心传媒 has been a pretty good example of trying to bring different parts of a wide constituency together. Theorists, who typically would wear the comparative education hat.  Policy makers and practitioners, who might have the international education hat on. But I think that’s been at the heart of the creation of 糖心传媒 philosophically and also one of its strengths going into the future. That we have a community of researchers that have sensitivity to theory, policy, practice, methodology, bridging cultures and traditions really. And, you know, that was a bit of my input in those early days. Here at Bristol, I was, well, I was the founder of our own research centre. It had a slightly different name in 2000 when we created it, but it is the Centre for Comparative and International Research in Education, today, and it’s got that tradition going back to 2000.

But we did the same thing. It’s not just a coincidence, what happened with 糖心传媒, we were trying to create with our research centre here at Bristol. And I’m pleased that we’re still alive, strong and well. And those principles still underpin a lot of research that’s going on within our research centre in Bristol and within 糖心传媒 overall. So I’m just trying to connect a bit of the institutional history for those who it would be new to, with some of the theoretical issues that we’ve just been discussing.

25:53 Kate:

Thank you so much for that. I think that’s very necessary to understand the work that has come before, as this is part of the theme of our discussion, right? So, um, I was hoping to take our conversation forward to your point that you made earlier on big new data and how that is being applied, possibly uncritical, uncritically, sorry, in policy development. And I was wondering what your thoughts are on the relationship between big new data and globalisation and how that informs education and the policies that are being imposed, I would say, through, big corporations, and the big banks.

26:40 Michael:

The paper I wrote in comparative education might be worth looking at for colleagues that are listening to this, because I think it was the first time someone within comparative education really had focused a lens upon big data and it’s in the title somewhere along with 鈥楿ncritical International Transfer鈥�.

But at that point in time, this is 2014, isn’t it? The 50th anniversary issue of the journal Comparative Education, by the way. I was looking increasingly at, well, big data was becoming a phrase that seemed to be everywhere with a lot of advocates and supporters, and I hadn’t seen enough critique, so that inspired the paper itself, the article in comparative education, but the focus of, part of the critique was on how the PISA studies, supported by international surveys and vast amounts of quantitative data were beginning to dominate a lot of policy discourse and, direction and in fact leading, promoting what I saw as further uncritical international transfer. You know, from one context to another. So ministers of education in those days were seen repeatedly, traveling in Europe to Finland to learn how to do what Finland did better. Or if it was in Asia, they’d be going to, Hong Kong or certain bits of China that seem to be doing well on the global league tables 

28:12 Kate:

Singapore, 

28:13 Michael:

Yeah, you know, it’s a familiar story, but that was very visible in those days, but it was a new form of very simplistic international transfer from my lens, and supported by increasingly big data sets, and you could see big data itself emerging that leading into AI,  where we’re all dealing with issues today, the pros and the cons. But I think that remains a big issue. And I think today, I’m trying to make sure here that we focus upon where things are going and could go or should go without me being prescriptive.

I think today, many of the issues are still the same. We need more research that’s based on, that reflects what is really happening in practice and policies and practices that are more connected with the different cultures where, improvements in quality, maybe people are trying to do, to implement. I know very little of your own work, but I do know that you’ve spoken to me about Namibia, And Namibia, actually, even though it’s a huge country, it’s still a small state,  population wise, which is an area in which I do specialise.

The dangers of smaller systems, smaller states, being imposed upon by the power of big data, big surveys, PISA studies, even international research groups, suggesting that this is what you guys should be doing, is that they have less agency to fight back. So for me, my work with my former students and colleagues in Namibia has been to try and help strengthen their own local research capacity in ways that they can work with international agencies and people and scholars, but in ways where they may be able to be in a stronger position, to shape what might be appropriate for their systems, their cultures, their context. And then within a place like Namibia, you’ve got how it works even within the system, you know, with different groups from the SAN communities or, others. But for me, again, the heart of this would be discipline comparative research that is imbued with some of the strengths of qualitative approaches to research, which in my more recent writing is really connected very strongly with indigenous knowledges and how local voices and what local voices are saying fits their communities, their education systems, their ambitions, their national system, their local systems.

31:07 Kate:

From what you said, and what we’ve been talking about for the past 30 minutes now, for me, it becomes quite clear that there has been one form of imposition that has moved from one context to another. So, you spoke about what it was like when you started with your masters, and then we spoke about how it developed, maybe to big data. And we also spoke about the imposition of theories from the U.S being applied uncritically, even within a decolonial sense to other contexts in the world. And for me, when I listen to you speak, and when I consider the scholarship of people in the past and their work in trying to bridge cultures and divides, from my lens, it seems as though the reason why imposition just continues is because we continue it, or we continue the work that we’re trying to do within the same framework, within the framework that encourages the sort of thinking of us versus them, which is what brings me back to one of the earlier questions that I asked about the, completely different epistemic grounding, one that is based on indigenous and local context. And obviously that means for whichever context that comes from, I mean, it doesn’t exclude countries that are in the Global North. They have their own ways of being, and indigenous people have their own ways of being, and the,  different epistemic grounding that I am calling for and that other decolonial scholars also call for, is one that is horizontal, and one that allows difference to stand side by side rather than in a comparative or competitive way. What are your thoughts around that? And then once we hear your thoughts on that, I think we will start wrapping up and talking about what you wish you knew when you were doing your PhD, just for the students listening in to this podcast.

33:26 Michael:

The horizontal sort of positioning, if I’m getting this as you intend, for me has great strengths to it. And I think I’m probably positioned close to you in that respect. For me, we need to give more priority, certainly, to the grassroots or indigenous or lived reality positions, views, understandings, cultures, but only that also has its own limitations. So the horizontal sort of epistemological positioning with I think you’re talking about, giving value and weight to different positions where appropriate, I think is a healthy way forward. And it reminds me something that I perhaps should mention because this came from early career researchers in the 糖心传媒 community. In 2015, and 2016, we ran a 糖心传媒 supported series of events around insider, outsider, research approaches in comparative and international education. That led to a book that was published in our series, The Bristol Papers in Education, as it was called then. In 2016, edited by myself and Elizabeth McNess and Laura Arthur, all people from 糖心传媒.聽 All the contributors were doctoral researchers at that point in time, early career researchers, exploring how to revisit insider outsider positioning in comparative and international research in education.

That book, I think, is still valuable for our community, particularly early career researchers, to look at and perhaps to use, especially if you’re working around this horizontal positioning. I think at the heart of the book were conclusions where our debate over a couple of years and pulling the papers together in the book and trying to distill what we have really done here – it was an increased understanding how no one really these days is an insider or an outsider. We tend to transition between them. It’s a more liminal sort of space and it depends where and when… Again for me context matters if you’re trying to understand where you are, as an insider or outside and working together, strengths of that, but still understanding the limitations of traditional ways of thinking about insider and outsider positioning. And I would have thought that might be a useful reference in some of the papers that came out of it. The editors, myself and two others, Elizabeth was the lead author on a piece in, now, it’s in Compare, I think, called Ethnographic Dazzle. That came out of the book and the whole 糖心传媒 supported project. So I’m really trying to give 糖心传媒 some credit here for supporting that team of people. And I know since then, other sub teams, including some other colleagues working in South Asia have built upon that sort of work, with similar sorts of events. But that was a starting point within 糖心传媒, certainly, of work that I think supports much of what you’re talking about as new ways, better ways forward. 

37:00 Kate:

If I could just jump in, I just want to say that some of the things I’m talking about, I don’t want to label as new ways or better ways. I think that these ways have always been there. And I think that, yeah, many indigenous people have already been working in these ways that we are talking about now. It’s just sort of uncovering them and creating those bridges that you have been calling for between past and present.

37:29 Michael:

I’d agree with that. Sorry, just let me flag again the work that’s been done by decolonial scholars, in education and in fact connecting to comparative ed in, Oceania goes back into certainly the 1990s. With some of my very recent publications, you’ll see I’ve tried to reference them a lot to show how those guys have been challenging those boundaries for decades, at least, in a way that is understandable in the contemporary debate today. 

38:00 Kate:

Okay,  great. Do you remember what you were saying before I jumped in with the new ways sidestep?

38:06 Michael:

I鈥檒l need your guidance again, I think you were about to say we’ll wrap up.

38:10 Kate:

Yes. The wrap up was about your journey doing your PhD and what you wish you knew when you were doing your PhD so that we can share that with the students who hopefully will be listening to this podcast. 

And then one more time about that book that deals with the insider outsider positionality. 

38:29 Michael:

Right, I’ll start with the book. Insider outsider Research in Comparative and International Education. And it’s edited by myself, Laura Arthur and Elizabeth McNess. It was published in our Bristol Papers in Education series by Symposium Books in 2016. It has a total of 13 chapters, all of which involve early career researchers wrestling with that question about how do we get the best out of rethinking the positionings that we have in terms of insider, outsiders and the words I used earlier. I am very happy to see that colleagues that I work with, we’re still pursuing some of these ideas. And when we’re looking particularly at the challenges of international research partnerships in a bigger way in which this sort of stuff fits. So there’ll be new things coming out from my own work in future. Before I go off this book, we in 2023, moved the publisher from symposium books to the Bristol University Press. And the series is truly flying at the moment. 

So again, references for early career researchers in our field within our 糖心传媒 community do have a search. It’s now called, Bristol studies in Comparative and International Education. We’ve had 11 volumes published, really cutting edge stuff in the last two years. That’s 2023 and 24.

Your wrapping up question that if I went to do my own doctoral what would I would have liked to have known at that stage?

I have thought about this in advance. The first point is, it’s so important, it just makes everybody smile maybe and they’ll say, well, we realise that, but I’d say choose your supervisor well. Really important thing to know when you’re starting your early career, choose your supervisor well, for their knowledge, their experience, but also their supportive interpersonal relations.

All three of those aspects are important. It’s a long time that you work together. And you need to be able to work together and get on well and enjoy the process, the opportunities of being able to do your own research and focus upon it, particularly if you’re full time. If you’re part time, I know there’s other challenges.

And a second one, what did I have as a second point? Yeah, again, a very obvious thing, but sometimes the obvious things people appreciate having pointed out, and that is focus your reading on what you need for your own research. It’s too easy at the starting point, I think, to feel rather pressured and think you should know everything and read everything and to maybe feel overwhelmed with stuff. Of course the world moves on and more and more is available on the internet than it would have been in the days when I was doing my PhD, but the principle is, focus your reading on what you really need for your own research. So that you don’t get too lost in thinking you’ve got to know everything about everything.

And a third one, that’ll be the last. Probably wished I’d known earlier on about the basic structure of the typical doctoral thesis. Now it doesn’t matter if you want to challenge that and make your structure very innovative and different. Do it if you’ve got the confidence, but you’ll have more confidence to do that if you know what is normally expected as the components and structure of a thesis. And that still does remain pretty standard in most university systems because of the expectations of external examiners and exam boards and all of those things, you know, there are core structural elements, if you know what they are and how they fit together, it can make your life much easier as you’re doing your doctorate. My final doctoral student was my 50th, so that’s more doctoral students than many of my buddies and colleagues because I tended to focus my career on doctoral supervision. That experience is embedded into this sort of advice that I’m trying to pass on a little bit. Yeah, to know the structure of a thesis, or the normal expectations is very helpful, even if you’re not going to do it that way. You can challenge it more confidently.

43:19 Kate:

Wow. I have more questions about all those three points. I should probably not ask them all, but I will ask one about focusing your reading. I feel that this is something I struggle with because I want to focus on reading for my research, but I feel that the discussion branches out into other things and then when I mention those things I feel like I can’t mention those things if I do not know enough about them because then I might say something that’s completely incorrect or you know, come across as being ignorant of the arguments around that concept that is connected to what I’m saying, or what I’m researching. And that’s my struggle. And that’s why I read outside of my research focus.

44:02 Michael:

I think that reasoning is why I decided to say what I’ve said about one key thing I wish I’d known earlier on. I think we all find that dilemma that we, all good researchers, find that dilemma. They will not want to drift into other related issues without truly understanding what we’re talking about. And I think that’s a great sign that people are committed to doing that properly and deeply, but still need to make some hard decisions as to how far do I need to go down that track in the reading before I’m slipping off target.

And perhaps I’ve got to keep the time I need for the focused research that I’ve got to do. And it’s probably having the sense, trying to find a helpful way out of that. And for others who are listening, that’s probably a good conversation to have with a good supervisor. To say, I’m feeling as though I need to read more about this because it could be important for what is at the heart of my work.

You know, how far should I go on this? What’s your position? And get a discussion. And out of the discussion, you might find, you begin to feel, oh yeah, I can see, I’ll go that far, or, or I’ll cut that one, actually, and I’ll focus on this instead. You know, I think all great researchers want to read everything about everything, if it seems to be connected. But it is mission impossible if you let it run away with you. So, discussion point for supervision. 

45:40 Kate:

Got it. That’s very helpful. Thank you. Professor Crossley, thank you again for speaking with me and with our wider audience. I hope the questions that I asked generated good discussion points that people will find interesting. And, I hope that from this people will go forward and look at the reading that you suggested. I also hope that their thinking has been expanded by listening to you speak. 

46:08 Michael:

Lovely. Well, thank you for that. 

I’ll give you one very new reference just to add at the end, which is out this year.  There is a book coming out by Bloomsbury, edited by other 糖心传媒 colleagues, Matthew Thomas, Michele Schweisfurth, and others as editors. And it’s about methods in comparative education. The reference I’m giving you, it connects to updating everything I’ve written on qualitative research. I wrote the key qualitative research methods in Comparative Education chapter for that book. It’s out in Bloomsbury in 2025, in this year. So that might be useful for anyone wanting to update some of the discussion we’ve had today on qualitative methods in comparative and international education . Thank you very much. I’ve enjoyed doing the session with you. 糖心传媒 is a great organisation and it provides a lot of support for early career researchers. And I think this new podcast series is a really helpful addition to the support that 糖心传媒 is providing, and I feel very pleased that I’ve been able to contribute to it.

So thank you. And thank you to everyone involved.