Collaboration and co-research as a way of expanding problem-understandings

Although co-research has recently gained political and institutional traction, we argue in this article that the concept risks becoming an overly broad label detached from its theoretical origins and critical ambitions. Drawing on practice theory and a subject scientific tradition, we emphasise that knowledge is situated, exploratory and produced through people’s engagement with conflictual social practices. Co-research is therefore not a technique, but an epistemological commitment to investigating common problems together with participants as knowledgeable subjects. To illustrate how processes of co-researching can change our understanding of a problem we involve different conceptualisations of inequality in education – moving from emphasising deficits related to children and disadvantaged backgrounds to exploring institutional conditions in societal practices. Through collaboration that examines participants’ subjective reasons for acting, co-research can illuminate the institutional dynamics behind individualisation – and generate relevant knowledge that resists reduction to decontextualised, managerial or instrumentally driven research.