ABSTRACT
In this volume’s culminating chapter, Christopher Lubienski contemplates the future of research use in light of the book’s content and his own scholarship, which has immersed him in the investigation of research use in educational policymaking. This chapter offers a cautious and critical take regarding intermediaries’ roles/functions in fostering research-to-practice connections. It includes summary discussion of some of the lessons gleaned on research use, but then also highlights some continued and sometimes intractable problems facing education systems. Some of these challenges, he argues, can be addressed via practices and research lines highlighted in the volume, but he also argues some are more structural in nature and therefore call into question strategies celebrating the potential of research evidence to guide practice and policy. This chapter also examines assumptions underlying the basic premise of seeking to enhance research-practice connections, and concludes with some admonitions regarding research’s role in the contemporary, fact-averse climate.
