Inclusive research in education: Dialogue, relations and methods

Who is to be included in educational research? How might the researched be included within educational research practices? Why does it matter that educational research practices should be inclusive and not exclusionary? This article draws on Martin Buber’s philosophy of dialogue to critique reductive and specialist answers to these questions and, more positively, to advance a conception of inclusive research as educative practice. In Buber’s thinking there are ideas that might guide educational researchers beyond the lure of both research that is conducted on individuals, held at an exclusionary distance, and measured in accordance with established methods, and research that is for individuals identified as political allies, so their research might be conducted with the researched. Inclusive educational research should itself be educative, the article concludes, but this education provides researchers with neither easy nor definitive answers to questions relating to who their research should include, how they might be included and why their inclusion matters, since this is an education that must be lived.