ABSTRACT

The Scottish Education Department's (SED) funded research programme plays a dominant part in educational research in Scotland. This programme includes developmental projects, but mainstream curriculum development has proceeded from documents produced by various national committees on which Her Majesty's Inspectorate are influential. Negotiations for research within the SED's programme are carried out by the Research and Intelligence Unit which mediates between the research community and the SED to promote mutual understanding. Funded projects are invariably designed to have some practical pay-off. During the 1970s the general funding increased steadily under both Labour and Conservative Governments. A sharp growth occurred from 1979 to 1981 as the Conservatives implemented designated programmes linked to their policies for education, but more recently the budget has had much smaller increases. Research has had a close relationship with practice and some influence on policy decisions, particularly in the programmes linked to government developments. The close links with practice have contributed to the rise of action-research approaches and facilitated dissemination of research ideas and findings in Scotland, but they have done little to communicate Scottish work to other parts of the world.