Educational researchers doing research on educational policy: Heroes, puppets, partners, or…? (original) (raw)
It is argued that it is essential for researchers to understand their relationship with policymakers if they are to act with what Aristotle identified as phronesis or practical wisdom (Aristotle, 1980). In order to do this, it is necessary to reflect on experience. It is further argued that the representation of that experience is itself at issue. Practical knowledge is not only situated and contextual. It is also provisional, perspectival and dependent on the form of the narrative (Stronach and MacLure, 1997). The discussion takes as its starting point a series of articles that have appeared in recent issues of the British Educational Research Journal (Brown et al, 2003; Torrance, 2003; Beard, 2003; Wyse, 2003; Lather, 2004; Saunders, 2005). The stories of research told in these articles are also stories of the researchers’ identities: identities with strong value positions attached. In some accounts researchers appear as equal partners with policy makers. In others they struggle against becoming mere tools of the system, browbeaten by the powerful funders. Sometimes they are heroes -- maybe tragic heroes -- defending their principles against the odds. This presentation tells contrasting insider stories of an evaluation carried out for the DfES of the Intensifying Support Project. It focuses particularly on the most recent part of the evaluation, completed earlier that year (2006).
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