The historical moment for UK educational researchers is specific, and those working
in the field have certainly been on the back foot. Whilst some recent challenges
reflect a lack of understanding, others hit home. Without doubt, there is room for
improvement in the rigour, accessibility and relevance of educational research. If we
wish to maintain independence and respect, then we have to attend to these issues.
If the academy wishes to claim a significant role in contributing to decision-making in
our democracy, then the status of our knowledge has to be justified.
In these circumstances, my view is that TLRP should be seen as an incredible
opportunity, rather than as a threat. In partnership with sympathetic users of
educational research, with support from multiple funders, managed by an
independent agency and populated by academics from Education and other social
sciences, it affords many opportunities for ‘active mediation’ in which external
pressures are adapted and shaped whilst preserving core commitments.
What then are these ‘core commitments’? In a recent Newsletter, I offered my own
perspective:
‘Our mission is to conduct research to enhance a broad range of learning
outcomes of relevance to individuals, educational institutions, workplaces and
our society as a whole. Our work will contribute to individual opportunity,
economic productivity and social cohesion, and to the new foundations of
evidence-informed policy and practice in education.’
Of course such statements reflect the kind of remorseless optimism from which I am
known to suffer, but they also draw on a long-standing and culturally embedded form
of Enlightenment commitment. We are, it seems to me, still basically in the business
of trying to apply reason to complex social issues in order to ‘improve’ our society.
This is a moral imperative - and is much more important than specific squabbles.
There is a bigger job to be attempted. We make our contribution to the future, and
we do it in the present. We cannot choose where we start from.
Can our knowledge be relied upon? Epistemological assumptions
This is a vitally important topic, on which I intend to write in more detail in due course.
For the present however, I will merely indicate some major elements of my
perspective.
Demands that educational research should demonstrate ‘What Works?’ have been
made regularly in recent years, and TLRP is right in the firing line of this expectation.
It is, of course, a simplistic and dangerous rhetoric. However, the call cannot be set
aside quite that easily, for underlying it, is serious dissatisfaction with the focus,
quality and relevance of educational research.
‘What Works?’ implies a singular focus on practical utility. This is an immediate
challenge to the diversity of paradigms and perspectives to be found in the academic
field of education. This diversity is maintained by people with highly developed,
specialist understandings, skills and commitments, and provides rich insights from
different perspectives. There are valuable intellectual resources there, often with
long evolutionary histories, which it would be foolish to ignore. Having said that, it is
also understandable that those involved in building a national educational system
hope that research efforts will engage constructively with it. I see this as an issue of
balance and degree - but we must certainly defend diversity, within TLRP and
beyond, as a source of challenge, innovation and possible change.