Conceptualising higher education research and/or academic development as ‘fields’: a critical analysis

This paper calls into question the idea that we can simply think about higher education as a research field and explores different meanings of the term field. It asks whether there are related fields: research into higher education, academic development and disciplinary teaching research, rather than one. The approach of the paper is conceptual, rather than empirical. It draws on the work of Wenger, Becher and Trowler, Bernstein and Bourdieu, all of whom have a claim to help us think about the nature of fields and academics' relationship to them. Each of these theorists highlights different aspects of what we might mean by a field, and thus what it would mean to claim that research in higher education is a field. The paper suggests that there can be no innocent answers to the question of fields because of our implication within them. It argues that there are normative as well as substantive debates about the nature of fields and the questions that can be asked within them.