In the last decade or so, demands by government agencies internationally for forms of educational research that can readily inform policy-making and its implementation have become newly familiar features of the landscape of educational research itself.  In more recent years, educational researchers have responded with their own vigorous critiques of such demands, or more particularly, of the constriction of educational research to institutionalised orthodoxies about ‘what works’ (Biesta, 2007; Bridges, Smeyers and Smith, 2008; Bridges 2008).

Building on critiques such as these, this research workshop will make and explore the claim that the demand for evidence-based research in education appears on the surface a reasonable and a promising one, but that its prominent institutionalised forms constitute a serious distortion: of research itself, of policy, and not least of educational practice. Our explorations will seek to illustrate that the reasonableness and promise in question depend on understanding clearly that education is a practice in its own right, as distinct from a subordinate field of action to be controlled by a class of superiors. Drawing on perspectives from different European countries, workshop contributors will argue philosophically that without such an understanding, the relationship between research and practice, and between research and policy, gets disfigured from the start.  

More particularly, the workshop will review in summary some of the main consequences of this kind of colonisation of research and practice; for instance: a conflation of genres of research reporting, regardless of audience and intent; an inattention to issues of diversity –of culture, of sensibility, of aptitude  etc.– in environments of learning; a neglect of the experienced quality of learning (as distinct from the indexible outcomes of learning); a marginalisation of matters of justice in educational practice; an attempted homogenising of both research purposes and pedagogical practices; a loss of the crucial conviction that any research worthy of the name must lead imaginatively and boldly rather than follow compliantly, if also reluctantly.

Pressing beyond critique, the workshop contributors will offer illustrations of forms of educational research which provide the kind of evidence that really matters; forms which carry the authority and conviction that resonate strongly with practitioners; forms which practitioners continually need in order to sustain their own best efforts in circumstances of unprecedented plurality in learning environments. And here, ‘practitioners’ properly refers not only to teachers, but also to practitioners of educational research and of educational policy-making. These illustrations will be provided from recent research endeavours in Ireland, Scotland, Poland, England and Belgium that have tried to get beyond the strictures of the more orthodox forms of the evidence-based idea. They will seek to exemplify in different ways the incisiveness, the originality and the transformative power of the inspirations that research must yield: (a) if practice is really to be enriched by research; and (b) if research is to elicit in turn from practice a range of questions that are genuinely worthy of enquiry. 

Biesta, G. (2007) Why ‘What Works’ Won’t Work: Evidence-Based Practice and the Democratic Deficit of Educational Research, Educational Theory, vol. 57, no.1, pp.1-22 Bridges, D. P. Smeyers and R. Smith eds. (2008) ‘Evidence-Based Education Policy’: What Evidence? What Basis? Whose Policy? Special Supplement issue of Journal of Philosophy of Education, vol.42, August 2008 Bridges, D. (2008) Evidence-Based Reform in Education: A Response to Robert Slavin European Educational Research Journal, vol.7, no.1, pp.129-133 Godoń, R. (2004) The University and Social Transformation, Policy Futures in Education, vol.2, no.2, pp.365-373 Griffiths, M. and G. Macleod (2008) Personal Narratives and Policy: Never the Twain? in Bridges, Smeyers and Smith eds. pp.121-143 Griffiths, M. (2009) Action research for/as/mindful of social justice, Handbook of Educational Action Research, Ed. Somekh, B. & Noffke, S., pp. 85-98. London: Sage Hogan, P. A. Brosnan, B. deRóiste, A. MacAlister, A. Malone, N. Quirke-Bolt, G. Smith (2007) Learning Anew: Final Report of the Research and Development Project ‘Teaching and Learning for the 21st Century’, Maynooth: National University of Ireland Maynooth Hogan, P. (2009) The New Significance of Learning: Imagination’s Heartwork, London & New York, Routledge Slavin, R. E. (2008) Evidence-Based Reform in Education: What Will it Take? European Educational Research Journal, vol.7, no.1, pp.124-128 Smeyers, P. & M. Depaepe, eds. (2006) Educational Research: Why ‘What Works’ Doesn’t Work, Dordrecht, Springer Smith, R. (2008) Proteus Rising: Re-Imagining Educational Research, in Bridges, Smeyers and Smith eds. pp.179-194