Beyond Binaries in Education Research explores the ethical, methodological, and social justice issues relating to conceptualizations of binary opposites in education research, particularly where one side of the dualism is perceived to be positive and the other negative. In education research these may include ability-disability, academic-vocational, adult-child, formal-informal learning, male-female, research-practice, researcher-participant, sedentary-mobile, and West-East. Chapters in this book explore the resilience of binary constructions and present conceptual models for moving beyond them and/or reconceptualizing them to facilitate more productive approaches to education provision. With contributors from authors working in a multitude of educational fields and countries, this book provides a significant contribution to the ongoing challenge to seek new ways to move beyond binaries in education research.

1. Constructing and Deconstructing Binaries in Education Research  Alison Mander, Patrick Alan Danaher, Mark A. Tyler and Warren Midgley  Section 1: Researching Researchers  Warren Midgley  2. Methodology, the Western, and Myself: The West/Non-West Binary in a Non-Western Educational Researcher’s Pursuit of a PhD  Akihiro Saito  3. Determining a Voice to Use in Writing about Mixed Methods Research  Dinah R. Dovona-Ope  4. Beyond Observer and Observed in Reflexive Analysis  Warren Midgley  5. Destabilizing Binaries in Early Childhood Education: The Possibilities of Pedagogical Documentation  Laurie Kocher and Veronica Pacini-Ketchabaw  6. Moving Beyond Sedentarism: Conceptual and Empirical Developments  Patrick Alan Danaher and Robyn Henderson  Section 2: Privileging Participants  Mark A. Tyler  7. A Tango in VET: Whose Notion of TAFE Teacher Leads?  Mark A. Tyler  8. Beyond the Binaries that Keep Us From Writing With and Like Children  Shelley Kinash and Kirsten Kinash  9. Burying the Binaries: Getting Discourses to Converge in a Program for First Year University Students  Robyn Henderson and Karen Noble  10. Not Education Research Binaries – Just Parts of a Whole  Lindy Abawi  11. Beyond the Binary of Researcher/Researched: The Complexities of Participatory Action Research  Karen Hawkins  12. Understanding Cultural Differences between Western and Confucian Teaching and Learning  Peng Zhou and Cec Pedersen  Section 3: Considering Contexts  Alison Mander  13. From Maintaining to Sustaining: Moving Beyond Binaries Toward a Framework for Cultural Sustainability in Higher Education  Sara Hammer, Jill Lawrence and Henk Huijser  14. Exposing Bush Binaries: Using the Media to Problematize Gender  Sherilyn Lennon  15. Expectations of Ability and Dis-ability at University: The Fine Art of Managing Lives, Perceptions and Curricula  Sara Hammer, Shalene Werth, Peter Dunn, Kym Lawson and Danielle d’Abadie  16. Formal, Informal and Incidental learning: How Recreational Diving Instructors Achieve Competency  Keith Cardwell  17. Limited-Term Contracts and Tenure: The Case of Foreign Language Teachers in a Japanese University  Sean Mehmet  18. Beyond Educator/Practitioner Binaries: Overcoming Barriers to Cooperation Using Professional Cultural Axes  R. Todd Hartle, Rosemary Smith, Stephen Adkison, D.J. Williams and Paul Beardsley