From Procrustes to Proteus: Trends and practices in the assessment of education research

This article is a reflection on an area of particular interest in the current research environment, but which has not yet been explored satisfactorily in the education literature: the evaluation of educational research. The particular focus is on the UK context, but the article is informed by comparative evidence from six countries (gathered through analysis of policy and administrative documents, literature review, informal discussion and written requests for information from key persons). It identifies eight recent trends in the evaluation of education research (from performance-based funding and institutionalisation of assessment, to the de-sensitivisation of research assessment) and it explores the benefits and perils of three types of assessment procedures (peer review, bibliometrics and econometrics) as they operate at a micro, meso and macro level. The article argues that current evaluations of educational research (particularly those aimed at supporting funding decisions) tend to operate from an instrumental standpoint that largely ignores the epistemic specificity of the various fields, modes or genres of research, the assumptions about knowledge with which they work, and the cultural and social dimensions of research evaluation as a practice