Educational Research and the Practical Judgement of Policy Makers

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This publication arises in a context in which policy makers and educational researchers are increasingly vocal in their demands that educational policy and practice should be informed by high quality research. In some renderings in the USA and the UK this has been translated into the language of ‘evidence-based’ policy and practice and in both countries this in turn has led to ‘systematic reviews’ of educational research aimed at sifting what is regarded as research which can reliably inform us ‘what works’ from that which is less deserving of attention. In the United States following the re-authorisation in 2001 of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (‘No Child Left Behind’) only such research as compares with the medical double blind randomised controlled trials has been seen in government circles to be deserving of attention in terms of policy formation. Not quite so restrictively, the ‘systematic reviews’ favoured by UK government and carried out under the auspices of the Evidence for Policy and Practice Information Coordinating Centre (EPPI Centre: http://www.eppi.ioe.ac.uk) at the London Institute of Education have nevertheless—‘systematically’, one might say—excluded whole swathes of educational research from their consideration. These exclusions were especially significant in terms of research which indicated what policy should be as distinct from how a particular determined policy might be implemented or delivered, but they also put beyond the frame of consideration, for example, much research based on individual case studies or narratives, let alone philosophical work or critical theory.