ABSTRACT
This chapter engages with the central issues of the book. What is the relationship between research and the making of policy? How can the knowledge generated by academics through, in this case, research into innovative information and communication technology (ICT) projects be communicated to policy-makers in ways that are meaningful and therefore useful? At the heart of these questions lie the reality of two very different life views, each with their own embedded assumptions about what counts as valid ‘knowledge’/‘evidence’ and how we can judge its reliability. It is commonplace to remark on the difference in the language used by researchers and policy-makers and there is a tendency for each group to be impatient of the language of the other. These different discourses reflect different values and understandings of the world. What policy-makers value – the evidence about ‘what works’ – may appear to university-based researchers to be at a superficial, technical level; researchers are likely to be more concerned with understanding the deeper social and political processes involved in human beings’ attempts to make something ‘work’. In relation to the use of ICT in education these differences translate into two habitual postures: policy-makers have a tendency to see ICT as a high-profile, system-wide means of ‘transforming’ learning, and social science researchers have a tendency to see ICT as a distraction from the core educational business of teaching and learning. In their concern to ‘speak truth to power’ (Wildavsky 1993), they often dismiss policy-makers’ aspirations as a futile search for ‘magic solutions’ (House 1974, pp. 213-214).
