Australia, as much for financial and reputational reasons, is rapidly following on European(and English) and New Zealand trends towards a research assessment exercise that promises to shape how educational research is done, who does and with what intent. This will exacerbate the cult of performativity already evident in Australia and other systems in research (eg Morley 2003) driven by the emerging international quality assurance movement(Middlehurst and Campbell 2001) and increased competitiveness in internal markets where 'reputation' and particular representations of 'quality' are key indicators of prestige( eg current ranking of universities) and therefore capacity to attract high 'quality' students. Drawing from a qualitative pilot study, and workshops at a conference, to be undertaken in the first six months of 2005 investigating how Australian educational researchers consider issues of quality, this paper explores first, how transnational discourses about quality and research are discursively articulated in Australian context; second, how they are articulated differently within specific institutional sites (ie research or teaching intensive universities); and how Australian educational researchers understand what constitutes 'quality'. It locates the study within wider debates about higher education, funding policies and marketisation of higher education, and concerns about the 'impact'(or lack of) of educational research on policy and practice in terms of what research is considered useful, and by whom( eg DETYA 2001). The paper is informed by similar research undertaken on research assessment in the UK ( eg Furlong 2004) and New Zealand(eg Codd 2004), and draws on the tools of policy sociology, feminist theories of globalisation and comparative sociology(Mazur 1999), and recent research on quality in teaching and learning (Blackmore 2003).Blackmore, J. (2003)What's quality got to do with it? Universities, quality assurance and academic pedagogies. NZARE/AARE Conference, AucklandCodd, J.(2004) Performance Based Research Funding in New Zealand. Paper presented to AARE Conference, Melbourne.DETYA(2001) The Impact of Educational Research on Policy and Practice Canberra, CGPSFurlong, J. (2004) Quality in Practitioner Research in education. Paper presented to AARE Conference, Melbourne.Lingard, B. and Blackmore, J. (1997)The performative state and the state of educational research, Australian Educational Researcher 24 (3) pp. 1-30Mazur, A. (1999) Feminist comparative policy: a new field of study? European Journal of Political Research 35(4)483- 506Middlehurst, R. and Campbell, C.(2001) Quality Assurance and Borderless Higher Education: finding pathways through the maze Observatory on Borderless EducationMorley, L. (2003) Quality and Power in Higher Education. Buckingham, Open University Press.