Research and policy in education: evidence, ideology and impact

In a sense, this book is the third volume in a trilogy. In 1985, I published <i>Sociology and School Knowledge</i> (Methuen, 1985). This brought together and reflected upon the work I had been doing over the previous 15 years on how sociology could help us understand curriculum issues and struggles over the nature of schooling. In 2002, I brought together my work of the next 15 years in a book called <i>Making Sense of Education Policy</i> (Sage, 2002), which again used sociological perspectives to explore the provenance and impact of education policy in the UK and beyond. This third volume, <i>Research and Policy in Education</i>, gathers together some of the work I have undertaken in the past 15 years, for 10 of which I was Director of the Institute of Education, University of London (now UCL Institute of Education; IOE)