Abstract
This chapter touches on some of the issues discussed in Chap. 5 in the context of educational research and practice, but here it is concerned with the relationship between educational research and policy and, more specifically, with the sort of knowledge which can and should inform educational policy. The chapter treats this as an epistemological question and distinguishes it from the more extensively explored question of what sort of knowledge in what form policymakers do in fact commonly take into account. The chapter examines the logical and rhetorical character of policy and the components of policy decisions, and argues that policy demands a much wider range of information than research typically provides. Either the research task or commission has to be substantially extended or the gap will be filled by information or thinking which is not derived from research. One of the gaps between research of an empirical kind and policy is the normative gap. The final section of this chapter points to the inescapably normative character of educational policy. Of course the values which inform policy can be investigated empirically or deconstructed through discourse analysis, but this kind of inquiry cannot tell us what we should do. There is, however, a role for research/scholarship and more, rather than less, intelligent and critical argumentation in addressing these normative questions, as well as the empirical questions which underpin policy. This chapter might be read alongside Chap. 9 on the role of the philosopher in policymaking.
This chapter is mainly derived from a paper that I originally wrote with Michael Watts in the context of the Economics and Social Research Council Teaching and Learning Research Programme (ESRC TLRP). It was published first in a supplementary issue of the Journal of Philosophy of Education (2008) edited by Bridges, D., Smeyers, P., and Smith, R., and subsequently (2009) by Wiley Blackwell as Evidence-based education policy: What evidence? What basis? Whose policy? I am grateful to Michael Watts and to Wiley Blackwell for allowing me to draw substantially on this paper.
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Notes
- 1.
Similar complaints have been made against a wider range of social science research—see, for example, the 2003 report of the UK’s Commission on the Social Sciences, which speaks of ‘significant problems with the exploitation of social science research in government, local government, commerce, the voluntary sector and the media’ and observes that ‘the caution of some academics towards close engagement with practitioners is a source of great disappointment to many users of social science research’ (Commission on the Social Sciences 2003, Executive Summary).
- 2.
McLaughlin drew a different set of distinctions from those which we employ here when he wrote of the different ‘languages’ of policy debate, which he labelled roughly as official, professional, research, and popular (McLaughlin 1999: 37–38). The distinctions I have observed cut across these and can be drawn in each of these contexts in one way or another.
- 3.
‘By starting with the problems which policies are trying to solve, by testing policies as we would a hypothesis, by formulating alternative problems and alternative solutions, and by examining the outcomes, intended or not, a realist approach to policymaking and policy analysis can offer the hope of improvement’ (Pratt 2000: 146).
- 4.
Furlong and White (2001), for example, describe a three-stage model which includes: (i) policy planning—putting issues on the agenda, helping policymakers recognise their current and future information requirements, and reviewing what is already known; (ii) policy development—piloting new initiatives, developing specialised policy instruments, and developing specialised curriculum materials; and (iii) evaluation—finding out what worked and what did not, and linking past experience to future planning.
- 5.
Although I use the language of decision, I readily recognise that policy does not necessarily proceed on the basis of discrete and direction-making decisions. I am sympathetic to the incrementalist approach on this matter. As Finch explains: ‘The incrementalist model emphasizes that there are seldom specific “decisions” taken by a clearly defined set of actors choosing between alternatives’. Rather ‘change occurs cumulatively through a series of small scale decisions’ (Finch 1986: 150).
- 6.
Saunders calls for more ‘thick description’ of what goes into the policymaking process (Saunders 2004). While welcoming such empirical investigation I am attempting something different here in suggesting the kinds of considerations which in a sense have to go into, or properly belong in, a considered determination of policy.
- 7.
Winch and Gingell’s (2004) book Philosophy and educational policy: A critical introduction provides a good example of this sort of argumentation around a number of contemporary policy issues, although I am not assuming that such argumentation is the exclusive privilege of philosophers. See also, for example, Whitty (2002), Making sense of education policy, which draws more heavily on sociological studies but is by no means limited to the reporting of empirical evidence. ‘The modesty of philosophy,’ suggested McLaughlin ‘must extend both to an acknowledgement that its contribution to educational policy is a partial one, and to its acceptance that its contribution must be offered in relation and dialogue with other reflective and critical resources and with the contingencies of circumstance and practice’ (McLaughlin 2000: 443).
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Bridges, D. (2017). Educational Research and Policy. In: Philosophy in Educational Research. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-49212-4_6
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