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OCR
BRIGITTE GEIRLER-PILTZ — ÉVA NEMES trait most representative of humanity is — to speak with Foucault — our “will to know”?. We strive to understand our world, other people, ourselves, what happens to us and what makes our societies tick. Finding things out — either haphazardly or in a systematic and organized fashion — comes natural to us, as can readily be seen in child behaviour. Scientific research, then, is one form of study to satisfy our inborn curiosity; perhaps the most pervasive. If we as supervisors and coaches want to know and understand our trade better, we will have to practice research. Although it goes too far to state that democracy is the exclusive precondition for research, it is certainly conducive to unpopular and uncomfortable questions that pose a serious challenge to conventional wisdom, or unsettle the claims of the powers that be. True; research has been — and still is — carried out in authoritarian and dictatorial regimes too, but the political freedom to pose every imaginable question and to look for every possible outcome, even if these are unexpected, counterintuitive or painful, is best guaranteed under democratic conditions. Proof of this is the room for self-reflective study and research democracies leave, or even purposely create. Democracies — however imperfect — generally handle sharp questioning of their own preconceptions better than we see happening in any other known form of government. This is what Anton Pelinka made clear with his opening address, giving an example of research into the various interpretations and misinterpretations of “the only game in the global village”: democracy. If we want to research our trade freely and uncompromisingly, we have to understand democracy in order to (better) support it. ROLE AND ISSUES OF RESEARCH IN SUPERVISION AND COACHING This heading serves as platform for Wolfgang Knopf, former ANSE president from Austria to deeply submerge into the topic of research. He impressively illustrates Without Research No Development, No Professionalisation. With an overview of the topic of the Conference he offers a short introduction to the history of ANSE, focusing on the question how to tackle the complex quality issue; a challenge by which ANSE since many years was — and still is — confronted with. In this context, the need of research for the benefit of the profession becomes apparent. Making ample use of research outcomes from other disciplines, Knopf states, the ANSE community is slowly developing ? See for instance Michel Foucault, Histoire de la Sexualité 1: La volonté de savoir, Paris, Gallimard, 1976. + ]4 +
