ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book looks at the contribution of education research and sets out some present day challenges. It explains research carried out by practitioners in order to address practical problems of teaching and learning. The book also presents a very different research tradition, one offering generalisations about education very often based on the precise measurement of learning outcomes. It describes the contributions from different types of research tradition including: small-scale case study; practice research; large-scale meta-analysis and systematic review. The book looks at six kinds of advocacy: neoliberal; conservative; liberal; reformist, progressive and radical. It explores the importance of education and the value of education and sets out some of the things that education research tells us. The book examines international comparisons in student outcomes in the work carried out by The Programme for International Student Assessment.
