ABSTRACT

This chapter shows that research within its proper limitations can be valuable and that local education authorities, who are in the best position to undertake innovation, could and should use research more and should harness it to their service. The now accepted pattern in which governments ask broadly based advisory councils to report on major matters reflects the suspicion with which any directly sponsored governmental research would probably be received by political opponents, local councils, and teachers. In some areas of social need the government made an amount of money available for project directors and researchers in association with local education authorities to try in a small number of schools to raise educational standards, support teachers, and encourage links between home, school and community. The education committee therefore asked for research to be undertaken, and a team was set up from senior members of social science and sociology departments of colleges of education in the Liverpool Institute of Education.