ABSTRACT
The gradual transformation of the social contract of science, in which policy-makers demand value for money and relevant knowledge to contribute to the solution of societal problems, has contributed to change the model provision of funding for science. Such quests for relevance recognises its genesis in the idea of evidence-based policy and practice that originally started in the field of medicine and quickly spread to other fields, such as education, and the overall policy process. In the search for what has been called the “what works” movement, one of the funding arrangements that has recognised special momentum since the 1990s is the thematic research programmes, sponsored by governments or research state agencies, to directly targeted research topics and develop research capacity. Considerable sums of public research funding for educational research has been allocated through thematic national programmes in order to guarantee quality in research, to create research capacity, and to provide results that could inform practitioners and policy-makers. In this chapter, I discuss how intrinsically and extrinsically related aspects of programmification in the United Kingdom and Germany foresee and impact the sustainability in educational research.
