‘All researchers engaged in a research career should be recognised as professionals and be treated accordingly’ observes the European Commission (2005, p.16). The European University Association similarly refers to doctoral candidates as ‘young professionals’ (EUA, 2005, p. 17). But should research(ing) – including educational research(ing) - be considered a profession? Fifteen years ago, in his presidential address to the British Educational Research Association (BERA) at its 1996 annual conference, Donald McIntyre preceded his examination of the professional status of educational research with the question, ‘How helpful and how necessary is it for at least some of us to see ourselves as professional educational researchers?’ (McIntyre, 1997, p. 127).

McIntyre appears to be alone within the European educational research community in raising publicly the issue of whether educational research should be categorised as a profession. Much more commonplace is unquestioning acceptance that it is a profession. Sometimes this acceptance is implicit, as in Hodkinson’s use of the term, ‘researcher professionalism’ (2004, p. 22) and Pearson and Brew’s (2002, p. 139) reference to ‘the student becoming an independent professional researcher and scholar in their (sic) field’ (my emphasis). Elsewhere it is more explicit. Delivered four years before McIntyre’s, Gipps’ BERA presidential address, ‘The Profession of Educational Research’ (Gipps, 1993), included no nomenclatorial elucidation or rationale, other than a hint of nominalization: ‘those of us who work in educational research, those who “profess” educational research …’ (p. 4, my emphasis). Her references to ‘our agenda as a profession’ (p. 13), the devaluing of ‘the profession of educational research’ (p. 14), and ‘our profession and our polity’ (p. 15) manifest a taken-for-granted categorisation of educational research as a profession.

But much has changed since the 1990s when Gipps and McIntryre each, as the BERA president, addressed the Association’s annual conference. In the intervening years we have seen the continued evolution of that part of society that represents what are generally known as professional workers, along with the dynamics of what is generally known as professional working life. Noordegraaf, (2007, p. 770) describes this continuing process: ‘boundaries are shifting … societal orders have turned from thick to thin, with more mobility, less stratification, and weakened collective frameworks’. Keeping pace with these changes, sociological thinking and theory has also evolved, including the sociology of professions. Against this backdrop my paper accordingly re-visits some of the issues raised by McIntyre (1997) and addresses what is essentially the same question that he addressed: Is educational research(ing) in Europe a profession, and does it matter whether or not it is? 

I conclude that educational research is not a profession, but that this does not matter because professionalism is now losing its cachet. Much more important, I argue, is developmentalism: the commitment to continued development. Only by becoming more developmentalist, I argue, will the European educational research community effectively play its part in supporting the European Research Council's purpose to develop a European Research Area that is capable of rivalling the research superpower status of the USA.

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