ITALIAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY OF EDUCATION

The article deals with the relationship between research methods and strategies of governing in Italian education field. In particular, it relates to the surveys, whose interpretative and methodological machinery colludes with the neo- managerialist re-culturing of education space by embedding new public management ideas and tools within the educational texture. Thus, in order to analyse the generative effects that certain methodological choices can have on producing the field to be inquired, it focuses on the way in which defining unit of analysis, choosing techniques to collect data and aiming to such research objectives contribute to produce the “representation for the field to be governed [...] the techniques to be employed, and the ends to be achieved” (Dean 2010, p. 268) in education field. Our findings show how: the neo-managerialist ‘tyranny of numbers’ (Ball, 2007) - imposed both on education space, and research methods in education field can be refused, because - despite inquiry contexts “governed by numbers” (Ozga, 2009) - readings in line with a democratic perspective can be supplied.