Session Information
23 SES 05 D, Changing Conditions for Educational Research Governance in Europe. Transnational and National Perspectives on Content, Shape and Directions of Educational Research
Symposium
Contribution
Educational research in many European countries has seen unprecedented growth over the past fifteen years, often implying structural and paradigmatic changes (Aljets 2015; Biesta 2015). Governments and research councils initiated a series of mid- and long-term programs, which host a plethora of smaller short-term projects. Other than simply providing regulatory or financial support, research funding institutions also define priorities and themes of research lending cognitive blueprints to these burgeoning research infrastructures (Braun 1998; Cozzens & Woodhouse 1995; Van den Daele, Krohn & Weingart 1979). Thus, we trace the process of institutionalization and development of empirical educational research in the United Kingdom, Germany and Norway beginning in the late 1990s up to today. To do so, we identify key actors in research and research policy making. We highlight the different prior structures and starting positions and the individual paths these countries have taken to develop their research infrastructure. The aim of this paper is twofold. Firstly, through the analysis of educational research programs we seek to grasp the mandate for educational research looking at the priorities of national funding bodies. Secondly, through the analysis of the projects we aim to shed light on the substance in order to understand the effects of programs on the shape of research beginning in the late 1990s. Applying quantitative and qualitative methods, we analyze the content of educational research programs since the late 1990s (N=14) and a large sample of related projects (N=786) in the three countries. In order to embed text material into a more contextual frame, we also conducted a series of interviews with researchers and policy-makers (N=25) (Bogner, Littig & Menz 2009). Firstly, examining programs, we find a focus on evidence-based policy making, internationalization, cross-disciplinary approaches, and the expected social impact as the main drivers in all countries. Secondly, analyzing the content of research projects, we highlight the field`s multidisciplinary character, the variety of academic traditions in these countries and the proliferation of diverse objects of study (scientific differentiation). We conclude by arguing that research programs created the material conditions to expand educational research, although this investment was accompanied by strengthening the underlying idea of evidence-based policy-making (UK, Germany, Norway), close linkage to explicitly-stated social and economic goals (UK), the urge to internationalize educational research (Norway, Germany), the call for more quality (UK, Germany) and the push for more empirical and quantitative educational research (Germany).
References
Aljets E (2015) Der Aufstieg der Empirischen Bildungsforschung. Ein Beitrag zur institutionalistischen Wissenschaftssoziologie. Wiesbaden: SpringerVS. Biesta G (2015) On the two cultures of educational research, and how we might move ahead: Reconsidering the ontology, axiology and praxeology of education. European Educational Research Journal 14(1): 11-22. Bogner A, Littig B and Menz W (2009) Interviewing Experts. Houndmills, UK: Palgrave Macmillan. Braun, D (1998) The Role of Funding Agencies in the Cognitive Development of Science. Research Policy 27, 807-821. Cozzens SE and Woodhouse EJ (1995) Science, Government, and the Politics of Knowledge. In: Jasanoff S, Markle GE, Petersen JC, et al. (eds) Handbook of science and technology studies. London: Sage, pp.533–553. Cruz Castro L and Sanz Menendez L (2007) New Legitimation Models and the Transformation of the Public Research Organizational Field. International Studies of Management and Organization 37(1): 27-52. Van den Daele W, Krohn, W and Weingart, P (1979) Die politische Steuerung der wissenschaftlichen Entwicklung. In: ibid. (eds) Geplante Forschung. Frankfurt/ Main: Suhrkamp. Waldow F (2009) What PISA did and did not do: Germany after the ‘PISA-shock’. European Educational Research Journal 8(3): 476-483.
Search the ECER Programme
- Search for keywords and phrases in "Text Search"
- Restrict in which part of the abstracts to search in "Where to search"
- Search for authors and in the respective field.
- For planning your conference attendance you may want to use the conference app, which will be issued some weeks before the conference
- If you are a session chair, best look up your chairing duties in the conference system (Conftool) or the app.