BERA review 2006: education research and policy

The review examines the relationship between educational research and policy, from the post-war period to the present, throughout the United Kingdom. Its purpose is to (a) illuminate the changing relationship between education research and policy, and (b) to clarify the different ways in which that relationship is understood. Its overarching purpose is to enable the education research community to locate current debates about research and policy within historical and theoretical frames of reference, and to enable researchers to locate themselves and their work in this contested area. The review is structured in three main sections. The first explores the shifting meanings of research and policy, with attention to the ways in which particular definitions of research produce consequences for the ways in which policy is understood, and vice versa. From these discussions, which include differences between applied, basic and strategic research, and between ‘policy science’ and ‘policy scholarship’, the authors offer a typology of education research–policy relations. The second section explores the meanings of research and policy in historical context, and examines the growth of research in education from the post-war years to the 1960s and 1970s. Some of the key themes in the relationship are introduced, and the historical origins of some current controversies are traced and explored. The third section looks at the research–policy relationship in the current context, with attention to the growth of evidence-informed policy-making, and to major disputes and controversies about research quality and methodologies. Throughout the review the focus is largely on education research in England, but comparative points, drawn from the history and contemporary experience of the Centre for Educational Sociology (CES), are made about research-policy relations in Scotland, as are wider points about international developments