ABSTRACT
Research is, as the word suggests, an investigation or search. Research is distinguished from other investigations by being, as the Oxford English Dictionary puts it, ‘careful’. Educational researchers belong to one or more research communities (sometimes referred to as scientific communities or scholarly communities), each of which has developed its own conception of what it means to be ‘careful’. The communities are concerned both about epistemological care (i.e. does the way the search was conducted give good reasons to trust its results?) and about moral care (has the research been conducted ethically, especially in the way it treated those studied?).
