CAPTURED BY THE DISCOURSE - ISSUES AND CONCERNS IN RESEARCHING PARENTAL CHOICE

In this paper we look at the relationship between political, cultural and economic change, the 'position' of parental choice in the various policy texts (in particular, it's centrality to The Parent's Charter) and what we have termed the context of practice (Bowe et al., 1992). I n particular, we raise some issues and concerns that arise from resear ch to date, in terms of their methodologies, their analysis and their representations of choice. It is the failure, in all these respects, t o consider the complexity and inter-relatedness of choice-making and p olitical and economic change that gives rise to our concerns. We tenta tively suggest a heuristic device, the metaphor of landscapes of choic e, that we think might help us to explore the relationships between th e various polity contexts, whilst recognising the embeddedness of the research process in precisely these contexts.