A Narrative of Enhanced Professionalism Educational Researchers and Popular Storybooks About Schoolpeople

Abstract

Three narratives about the history, current status, and future of educational researchers as professionals are discussed. The prevailing collective self-portrait portrays educational researchers as social scientists with maximum autonomy for setting their research agenda and for quality control of their products. A counternarrative of deprofessionalization posits limited autonomy: Research often follows available funding, and government-sponsored grants generally reflect a popularly held view of schools and schoolpeople as the sources of social ailments and undeserving of additional financial support. This view is implicitly reinforced as research findings based on this premise are disseminated to members of the general public through intermediaries, especially members of the press. A third narrative accepts the countercritique but, in a more hopeful vein, foresees educational researchers challenging this view of schoolpeople by speaking directly to the polity. This is accomplished through the creation of research texts in the form of accessible, compelling, morally responsible stories about the lives of schoolpeople, texts that are at once popular and excellent. In this manner is professionalism enhanced as educational researchers move to gain greater control over their research agenda by persuading members of the public and governmental funding agencies to increase support of research based on a more enlightened vision of schoolpeople as victims of difficult social conditions.