The impact of educational research: Teacher knowledge in action (original) (raw)
Related papers
The Australian Educational Researcher, 2010
(AARE) in representing and constituting this field. The evidence for the argument is derived from AARE Presidential Addresses across its 40-year history. The paper documents the enhanced complexity and diversity of the field over these 40 years, including the emergence of a global educational policy field, theoretical and methodological developments in the social sciences and new research accountabilities such as the Excellence in Research for Australia (ERA) measure. Specifically, the paper suggests that the evidence-based movement in public management and education policy, and the introduction of the ERA, potentially limit and redefine the field of educational research, reducing the usefulness and relevance of educational research to policy makers and practitioners. This arises from a failure to recognise that Education is both a field of research and a field of policy and practice. Located against both developments, the paper argues for a principled eclecticism framed by a reassessment of quality, which can be applied to the huge variety of methodologies, theories, epistemologies and topics legitimately utilised and addressed within the field of educational research. At the same time, the paper argues the need to globalise the educational research imagination and deparochialise educational research. This call is located within a broader argument suggesting the need for a new social imaginary (in a post-neoliberal context of the global financial crisis) to frame educational policy and practice and the contribution that educational theory and research might make to its constitution. In relation to this, the paper considers the difficulties that political representations of such a new imaginary •21
Education Research Australia: A changing ecology of knowledge and practice
Australian Educational Researcher, 2013
Processes of national research assessment, such as Excellence in Research for Australia (ERA) are a type of audit technology that confronts and steers established institutional identities and traditions. This nexus between policy and practice drives boundary work that diffracts prevailing policy logics, organisational practices, and habits of mind. We use this notion of ‘boundary work’ as an analytical lens for understanding the nature and effects of ERA in the Australian educational research space. This paper explains the methodology that informed the AARE-ACDE research reported in Strategic Capacity Building for Australian Educational Research. It documents the policy logic of ERA and the way it cuts across the established ecology of educational research, revealing social and symbolic work that is remaking the boundaries of educational research. We report on the historical trajectory of Australian educational research, the way ERA codes research outputs, and how educational researchers are repositioning in this shifting research space. We argue that there are specific loci of boundary work where capacity building in Australian educational research can make a difference to future educational knowledge building.
This article considers what it means to teach and learn in places of poverty through the narratives of front-line workers-particularly students and teachers. What is the work of teaching and learning in places of poverty in current times? How has this changed? What can be learned from both the haunting and hopeful narratives of front-line workers? Is it possible to continue to educate in these times and in ways that allow for critique, imagination and optimism? These questions are addressed by drawing from studies conducted over three decades in schools located in high-poverty neighbourhoods. Literacy education is considered as a particular case. Educational researchers need to remain on the front line with teachers and students in places of poverty because that is where some of the hardest work gets done. Reinvigorated democratic research communities would include teachers, school leaders, policy workers and young people.
This paper reflects on the geography of Australian educational research in the context of the ERA 2010 and 2012 assessments results. These results reflect significant changes to the nature of educational research over the past decades, where this research is conducted and by whom. We recap the historical changes to the formation of educational institutions and their impact on research outputs to demonstrate that interdisciplinary work is growing in a context where there has been a shift in research outputs away from the traditional area of school education. The ERA results demonstrate a high level of research activity in the intersections between previously distinct discipline areas, particularly in the scholarship of teaching and learning. The future of ERA itself is addressed in order to propose interventions that might make a difference to an ecology that is anchored in traditions and tends towards inertia. Finally, we argue that efforts by universities to build research capacity are likely to continue to be competitive, to focus on the individual rather than on departments and schools, and to be subject to an increasingly pervasive culture of accountability. Against this discourse of accountability, and an accompanying loss in autonomy and creative ‘think-time’, we propose that academics in education actively engage in a community of research. We conclude with interventions designed to build a high-quality, analytical and theoretically intensive research culture to underscore educational research in Australia.
Editorial—‘in praise of educational research’
British Educational Research Journal, 2003
We sought, for this 2003 special issue of the British Educational Research Journal, to celebrate some of the best recent education research. And, in our opinion, the eight papers in this issue suggest that we have been successful. All of the papers submitted in response to the call were sent via standard BERJ procedures to two expert referees and one of the editors. Referees were asked to comment on the quality and readability of the piece as usual, but were, in addition, asked to comment on their fit to the theme for this special issue. The responses about the fit to the theme for the eight pieces published here were unanimous. The papers represent some of the best of education research. Of course, these eight can only provide a snapshot of the work going on in education research, and they represent simply a subset of what was ready for publication at the time of this special issue. Some authors may, understandably, have been too modest to put their work forward for 'praise' (and it may be of interest in this context to note that two thirds of the authors are men). Several potential authors felt that their work was not yet quite ready, and others felt that theirs had already received sufficient attention. So the issue represents either new work previously unreported, or else summaries of programmes of work, spanning decades in some cases. Even so, probably the first conclusion to be drawn from this exercise is that we had no difficulty at all in filling this issue with responses to the call for reports of high quality studies. This is particularly significant in light of recent high-profile criticisms of the quality and relevance of (UK) education research. In his 1990 book 'In praise of sociology' Gordon Marshall argued that the best sociological research in the UK was rigorous, methodologically sophisticated, politically unbiased, of considerable value to society, and highly respected in the world at large. However, sociological research was, at that time, ridiculed by the media and politicians, and 'regularly caricatured as left-wing rhetoric masquerading as scholarship'. He therefore set out to demonstrate the importance of UK sociology for understanding society. The similarities with UK educational research in the 21 st century are noteworthy (and the word 'educational' could simply replace the word 'sociological' in the first paragraph). Similar issues and debates have arisen in many countries (see Shavelson & Towne 2001). As a field we have suffered blanket criticism from some informed, and some relatively uninformed, sources and have, as a consequence, acquired something of a public image problem. The OFSTED report by Tooley and Darby (1998) was critical of much educational research, but it also rightly praised many of the pieces it encountered in a brief sweep of the literature. However, the press, other reports and comments by OFSTED mentioned only the criticisms. Perhaps, therefore, educational