Revista de estudios teóricos y epistemológicos en política educativa (Jun 2016)
Notes on the concept of field and educational policy studies
Abstract
The concept of field is a recurring subject of discussions between the education policy researchers. Swelling the ranks of such debate, this text is an essay that discusses the different meanings of that concept in educational studies of different types (doctoral theses, articles, etc.). The paper is structured in four parts. In the first section, we performed an analysis of the historicity of the word field. After that, we scrutinized the writings by Pierre Bourdieu with the intention to better understand two concepts that we believe are essential to educational policy studies (“intellectual field” and “scientific field”). In the third part, we investigate the concept of field expressed in publications whose focus was how and why the studies in educational policies form a "field of something" (knowledge, studies...). Thus, we questioned the meaning of field registered in a set of 34 texts collected in the Thematic Library on the ReLePe site. In the fourth section, we finished the article offering some considerations to scholars who would like to use the word field in their investigations about educational policies.
