ABSTRACT
This chapter deals with issues about how knowledge is generated and its relationship with practice.
Educational research is socially and politically embedded. It is always undertaken by a real person or persons, within a particular context, for a designated purpose. Research does not just happen. It is planned to greater or lesser degrees, and has an overall design for what it hopes to show (a claim to knowledge), how it is going to gather and present data in support of the claim to knowledge, and how it is going to show the validity of the claim through some kind of legitimation process. Research aims to create new knowledge and gather data, and to test and generate new theories that are more appropriate for human living than previous theories. As soon as issues such as ‘new knowledge’ and ‘more appropriate theories’ surface, however, politics becomes prominent, because what counts as knowledge and theory is often contested by different theorists working in their particular contexts and with their own agendas. Research and theory generation involve tightly interlinked areas of influence, social purpose, justice, power, politics and personal identity. When speaking about educational research it is important to locate the conversation in historical, cultural and socio-political contexts.
