ABSTRACT
Educational research may be viewed as a scientific activity for various reasons: because it is based in scientific institutions, or because it uses scientific procedures, or because it is seen as a process of ‘mapping’ reality. Each of these perspectives is to be found in the history of the scientific approach to educational issues in Sweden. Initially, the creation of a specific discipline of education was legitimated by the need for a scientific basis for teacher education and the protection of the educational system from the influence of special interest groups.
The use of educational research in the comprehensive reorganization of Swedish schools demonstrated its value in the public sphere, and secured increased funding for an institutional structure for educational research. The tradition of large-scale empirical statistical psychological studies for which Sweden is internationally known was thus established.
Research activity, however, extended beyond these limits to include evaluation and development, to implement further organizational reforms and to construct new teaching materials on an individualized-learning model appropriate to the comprehensive school. More recently, problems, both social and pedagogical, within the educational system and new perspectives from sociology, combined with financial cut-backs, have tended to challenge the positivist assumptions in the traditional Swedish model of research. The thread of continuity throughout recent changes is the legitimation of educational research as a rational basis for decision making in education.
