The current educational research and policy hiatus: Where is the expertise to meet the challenge?

Abstract

Persistent calls for closer relations between research and policy from the educational research community in Australia and elsewhere, reflect growing concerns about a perceived lack of impact which educational research has on educational policy formulation and implementation. Rarely, however, is there any systematic attempt on the part of those expressing such concerns to explicate source reasons for the obvious hiatus existing between research and policy. Though not possibly accepted by the prevailing wisdom, several reasons particularly germane to the Australian context are proposed and discussed. The central theme underlying the paper is that there is an acute shortage of researchers (both staff and postgraduate students) in Australian tertiary schools and faculties of education with the training, skills and experience to meet either the current or emerging educational policy agendas of State and Federal governments. The paper argues that this state of affairs, seriously militates against the academic research community’s present and future capacity to make relevant contributions towards government policy requirements for research, unless radical steps are taken to redress these shortages.