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What do we mean by educational research ?

The aim of this chapter is ambitious though, on the surface, straightforward. It is to convey a sense of educational research as twin-focused — a systematic inquiry that is both a distinctive way of thinking about educational phenomena, that is, an attitude, and of investigating them, that is, an action or activity. Others have dubbed this as ‘a mode of interrogation for education’ (Brown and Dowling, 1998). To trumpet its distinctiveness is a necessary though insufficient starting point; educationists are living through times when research outputs have often received a hostile reaction, interestingly, if disturbingly, from both within the educational research community (Hargreaves, 1996; Tooley with Darby, 1998) and without (Woodhead, 1998; Barber, 1996). At first sight, such ‘spats’ may seem far removed from the world of the first-time or small-scale researcher in educational management. Yet they remain critical because the published outcomes of educational research form the bedrock from which postgraduate researchers start their own research journeys. As importantly, at the macro-level, they raise awareness about the extent of political manipulation in which research intentions and frameworks are bounded, and sound warnings about possible replications at the microlevel, especially the balance between what is ‘researchable’ and what is permitted or celebrated as research. More broadly, I want to argue that making visible the various debates that determine what constitutes educational research is complex and fruitful for all researchers, whether incoming or continuing. My experience of conducting research over the past fifteen years, and of encouraging others, would suggest that for managers of educational institutions, departments, and classrooms, some but not all criticisms of educational research are well founded. Tendencies towards academic elitism, the inaccessibility of research outcomes, and the perceived irrelevance of educational research may have left some managers, and teachers, in ‘a vacuum, with the so what? or what next? factors failing to be addressed’ (Clipson-Boyles, 2000, 2–3). The growth of professional doctorates and research-focused