ABSTRACT
This conclusion presents some closing thoughts on the concepts covered in the preceding chapters of this book. The book explores a more ‘scientific’ approach to education, very often conducted by professional researchers, not always with a practice background. It discusses the experimental research tradition, and saw meta-analysis and systematic review as particularly useful because of their scale, and because they offered a longitudinal dimension that reduced the influence of novelty and short term impact. The book argues that a mix of approaches was needed to give a full picture of how and why something was happening. It discusses theory as having several meanings and explored one particular type of theory that aimed to be more abstract, speculative and transferable. The book looks at advocacy as a way of organising ideas as to what was going wrong in education and how teaching and learning could be improved.
