Generalist Assessment

Generalist Assessment: Producing Knowledge

Much in the same way that our conception of what it means to engage in research has changed in the last several decades, the significance of being original cannot remain static. John Furlong, and Alis Oancea recognise this point when they claim that:

Recent changes in the relationship between research and society and the changing role of research in knowledge production and use mean that there is a need to rethink and adapt the concept of quality as it is employed in current research evaluation procedures (Furlong & Oancea, 2005, p.9)

Once we acknowldege the impact of society on us, we realise that being original can mean taking an idea that was invented in one context and applying it to another set of conditions and circumstances. Like wise being original can mean interpreting the results of existing reserch in new and exciting ways.

Knowledge is not a gift or a possession that some individuals have and others lack. On the the contrary, knowledge is attained when people come together to exchange ideas, articulate their problems from their own perspectives and construct meanings that makes sense to them. İt is a process of inquiry and creation, an active and restless process that human beings undertake in order to make sense of themselves the world and the relationships between the two.

With this worldview, how we define the notion of original research? The recognition that knowledge is contructed by human beings in their interaction with others and the world implies that original research cannot be confined to the traditional standards of newness - of discovering or revealing the unknown. Rather, original research is a much broader notion that includes the act of creating, interpreting, synthesising, and reorganisisng knowledge in new and interesting ways.

Yet why is it that the traditional notion of originality is used to evaluate integrative studies? Why is it that the most common concern raised by many reviewers pertains to the extent to which the topic has been addressed before?One reason for this practice is the academy's obsession with specialised research which leads to a uniformity of standards. The triumph of specialised research has resulted in a situation in which the standards which govern this form of research are used to assess all other forms of research. İn a culture marked by specialisation and fragmentation, it makes sense to talk about original work as something that adds knowledge to the existing body of inquiry in a particular field.

Of course the accumulation of knowledge in recent decades has contributed to the prominence of specialised research since the sheer volume of information in any particular discipline is extremely difficult to keep up with, let alone conducting interdisciplinary work. Those few scholars who attempt interdisciplinary studies are often viewed as engaged in soft research as opposed to the rigorous work of those that spend their entire careers digging deep into one topic. Practically speaking, it is convenient to assess all research in the same way since it enables us to apply common standards to all forms of academic work.

Moreover, finding a generalist to evaluate new research is much more difficult than a specialist since the former is quite rare. İt is much more easier to assess whether or not a particular topic or issue has been covered before (discovery) than it is to determine the merit of a particular interpretation, analysis of synthesis (integration). Some assessors are concerned about scholars not having done empirical research, and lowering the significance of an insightful, integrative research, synthesising philosophy, the arts and education projected in a research paper.


Source: Gordon M., What makes interdisciplinary research original? İntegrative scholarship reconsidered, Oxford Review of Education, Vol 33, No 2, May 2007, pp 195-209