Towards a Burning Question

The question I am working on now has to do with how students interpret success (this is really a study of student cultures and processes of making meaning) and how these stories of success are related to the willingness/capacity to inquire. Tickling this into a research question will take some time. I know that students interpret success in school in a range of ways. Their interpretations sit in tension with broader cultural interpretations. These systems interact and position students in relation to inquiry. So I am arguing as an assumption that inquiry is the purpose of higher education. This work begins in a study of measures of success and a direct and steely-eyed critique of econometric analyses as third order and distracting. 

It has taken me two years to realize that my focus is on interpretations/constructions of success and the relation of these cultural constructions to inquiry. Constructions of educational success and inquiry. There is plenty of writing ahead as I work out those two complex concepts, liberating the first from human capital theory and linking the second to imagination and a land ethic. The former is in many ways an obvious pursuit for an educational researcher at this moment. The field of higher education is desperately interested in increasing success and making it more efficient but at the same time is frustrated with the constructs of success that are used to understand higher education access, quality, equity, and efficiency. There is surely space for a survey of definitions of success, some grounded theory work to tease out themes, perhaps some critical theory work to wonder about alternatives. 

What is more tricky is the link to inquiry and a land ethic. Is it reasonable to stipulate to sustainable, local inquiry as the abiding purpose behind postsecondary education? Am I willing to put in the time to develop that argument? That is a question to return to.