Scientific Research, Educational Policy, and Educational Practice in the United Kingdom: The Impact of the Audit Culture on Further Education

Abstract

This article examines the relationships between the U.K. government's policy toward education and what is often termed the audit culture. In it, the author argues that audit and evidence-based practice are synergistic arms of policy development that presuppose a neo-positivistic research stance. Most directly through audit, this "regime of truth" is having a damaging effect on educational provision, explored here through the further education sector. The underlying reasons for this damage lie in the ways that audit and evidence-based practice misunderstand and misrepresent learning. Within this approach, the U.K. educational research field must distance itself from developing links with policy and government that are too close. It is this independence from external control that is the foundation of science, rather than positivist-derived methodological objectivity.