ABSTRACT
Educational and social research has faced much criticism over the last decade and a half for not engaging closely enough with the public debate, for not attending directly to issues of policy and practice, for lacking a cumulative trajectory, and for not being constructively authoritative enough. Writers who initiated such debates include Hargreaves (1996) in the UK, and Kennedy (1997) in the US. This has resulted in much rethinking, a revitalisation of methodological debates and new commitments to the processes of research capacity building. At the same time, the influences of neo-liberal and managerialist priorities have re-asserted the significance of paradigmatic positions that privilege quantitative research strategies, and approaches such as randomised controlled trials. Such methodological developments may have much to commend them—not least in generating research data and findings that educational policymakers and planners find to be statistically rich, accessible and transferable across contextual boundaries.
