ABSTRACT
Stephen Ball (2008, p. 101) argues that ‘education policy is now almost entirely subsumed within an overall strategy of public services reform’. One of the effects of this reform is that dominant educational policies exhibit an unequivocal preference for quantifiable and directly ‘applicable’ educational research outcomes. Evidence-based educational research which, as Biesta (2007, p. 6) reminds us, ‘has its origins in the field of medicine’ has resulted in an increasing technologization of educational research, which resists genuine experimentation, preferring the development and support of research projects that yield secure conclusions, assure linearity of progress and have general applicability of successful ‘scientifically tested’ educational interventions across the whole range of the population. Within the increasingly performativity-driven educational system and research culture, what counts as worthwhile educational research has been narrowed with admirable yet extremely worrying clarity. Ball (2003, p. 223) mentions a research project carried out by Gray, Hopkins, Reynolds, Wilcox, Farrell and Jesson (1999), which concluded that ‘In the hard logic of a performance culture, an organization will only spend money where measurable returns are likely to be achieved’.
