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The period when the British Educational Research Association (BERA) was founded was one in which there was an increasing recognition amongst the research community that a wind of change had stirred up the settled traditions of educational research. It was a time which celebrated the promise of alternative paradigms for research. Ten or so years on we are entering another era where the emphasis is not on the reconceptualisation of what research is but on how it is organised. I think one can discern at least two factors, not wholly separate from each other, that will increasingly influence how a substantial part of research will be organised. These two factors are the changes which have taken place in the composition of the research community and the direction of current Government policy concerning the school system. I aim to show how these are leading to a fruitful form of collaborative research at local level which should be encouraged and supported—not least by BERA. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents a response from the British Educational Research Association (BERA) Close-to-Practice (CtP) Research Project Team to an article about the relationship between education practice and education research. Topics discussed include the British Research Excellence Framework (REF) as an influence that has highlighted the nature of CtP education research, the academic discipline of education, and claims about the importance of collaboration and participatory research.

This article considers how knowledge, education and research interact as the institutional structures that support them change. Many efforts at large-scale education reform depend upon the proposition that what counts as useful knowledge can be easily defined, without reference to the specific contexts in which that knowledge will be set to work. Yet ?useful knowledge' as it appears to policymakers does not always translate into ?useful knowledge' from the perspective of practitioners. Distance and context matter. Based on studies of the development of literacy policy in England under successive governments, the paper assesses the dislocations and divisions of labour that characterise the contemporary knowledge landscape and asks how the research community can continue to act for the common good in an increasingly crowded and contested education field. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of the Research Excellence Framework ( REF) is to judge the quality of research in the UK and on that basis to apportion to universities, in a transparent manner, differential shares in the UK's £1.6 billion pot of research funding. However, the funding process is anything but transparent! While the REF process was known years in advance and remained constant throughout the assessment exercise, the mechanisms for the subsequent award of quality-related research ( QR) funding in England were opaque and 'adjustable'. The financial outcomes were put in the public domain following publication of the REF outcomes, but the calculations still remain a 'black box' even for experienced university administrators. The funding factors were not revealed in advance and dramatic changes were made to the formula once the REF results were known. This paper explores the intricacies involved in university QR funding and looks at the correlations between it and various REF outcomes. It discusses the tactical implications for academics and university administrators, and whether simpler alternatives that are just as effective can be developed in time for the next iteration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper reports the findings of a small-scale qualitative investigation into academic staff perceptions of research cultures across 10 English and Scottish university education departments. The study sheds light on four interrelated issues: the nature of research cultures, perceived facilitators, perceived constraints and the emotional landscape of working within a research environment. The findings indicate that perceptions vary according to staff academic and scientific capital, largely determined by career background and the type of university institution in which they work. While there is evidence of a culture of performativity and intensification, there is also evidence of widespread commitment to (and enjoyment of) educational research, especially where its value is broadly conceived to include outputs of applied research (including action research) as well as basic and strategic research. It is concluded that a broader policy conception of what constitutes value in research, coupled with a deeper understanding of the complex social and emotional factors that impact on academic well-being, will be important to building both commitment and long-term research capacity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on systematic analysis and research about the personal qualities of the teacher and educational policy in Great Britain. The essential themes which emerge from the research are that there is a significant proportion of poorly trained teachers within the schools and that the personal qualities of teachers are a decisive factor in accounting for their effectiveness. The personal qualities of teachers are a salient factor which shape good teaching. Moreover, the research undertaken by academic educationists shows that any attempt to legislate on the personal qualities of teachers is fraught with difficulties and must be treated with extreme circumspection.

In engaging in research we draw upon and develop meanings and concepts that help to frame what we do, how we do it and the meaning we make of it. In the process of framing, we exclude other possibilities from our research practices. To do research, then, is to engage in the fashioning of conceptual boundaries. This article explores the dilemmas of boundary-making in the context of a research project aimed at exploring the border literacy practices of students in UK further education, those boundary-crossing practices which relate to the everyday and more formal demands of the curriculum. This discussion is related to wider debates in the social sciences on the significance of boundaries and borders and their powerful effects on identities and actions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Schools in England are now being encouraged to 'personalise' the curriculum and to consult students about teaching and learning. This article reports on an evaluation of one high school which is working hard to increase student subject choice, introduce integrated curriculum in the middle years and to improve teaching and learning while maintaining a commitment to inclusive and equitable comprehensive education. The authors worked with a small group of students as consultants to develop a 'student's-eye' set of evaluative categories in a school-wide student survey. They also conducted teacher, student and governor interviews, lesson and meeting observations, and student 'mind-mapping' exercises. In this article, in the light of the findings, the authors discuss the processes they used to work jointly with the student research team, and how they moved from pupils-as-consultants to pupils-as-researchers, a potentially more transformative/disruptive practice. They query the notion of 'authentic student voice' and show it as discursive and heterogeneous: they thus suggest that both a standards and a rights framings of student voice must be regarded critically. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Pupil observation and educator–pupil discourse have recognised relevance within early years practitioners' repertoires, with long traditions of practice in England and elsewhere. Observation is now enshrined within the Foundation Stage Curriculum for 3–5 year-olds (England) (soon to become part of the Early Years Foundation Stage for Birth–5) and is advocated in fulfilling the Foundation Stage Profiling (assessment) requirements for individual children. This article begins by drawing on research by the author and on related research and theory to illustrate some complexities in learning processes in young children. The research has led to the development of an observation-interpretation tool—the Social Play Continuum. The Continuum, a tool to support the formative dimensions of observation, details progression in learning whilst the broader research has illustrated factors impacting on progression. An example of researcher–pupil dialogue is then analysed to consider the related dilemmas and potential of discourse within formative assessment. The article considers whether current policy development and documentation sufficiently recognise and encompass learning complexities and learner potential in young children. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article presents an analysis of case study data from a project evaluating Personal Development Planning (PDP) at a large post‐1992 university in England. The study was undertaken as part of a strategy of encouraging schools to build on existing experience while at the same time ensuring consistency with new national guidelines for the implementation of PDP across the whole sector. The aim of the research was to understand the models already available for supporting and developing PDP, and the views of different stakeholders about the place of PDP in the curriculum. The research was designed to engage with teacher beliefs in order to provide models of practice that could inform innovation. The study was based on interviews with staff and data were analysed on the basis of clusters of features to create models of different practices and approaches. Three ideal types of PDP emerged: professional, employment and academic. Each of the modes was associated with particular disciplinary domains, although none of them existed in pure form. The data suggest that pedagogic identities based on introjection and strong boundary maintenance displayed greater tension in relation to PDP than those areas already constructed on projection. UK moves towards PDP are part of an international trend. The great advantage of case study data, however, is that they allow insight into the dynamics of implementation at the local level and in this case the potential of generic initiatives based on projection to destabilise aspects of academic identity. New initiatives are more likely to succeed if they engage positively with teacher beliefs rather than being posed in contra‐distinction to them; the first step, however, is to understand and theorise them. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is evidence that the National Literacy Strategy (NLS) has led to a sustained increase in literacy attainment, especially in reading, although recent international comparisons also suggest some additional issues regarding pupil performance in England. The relative success of the NLS may at least partly lie in the policy application of several complementary areas of educational research, a suggestion disputed by Dominic Wyse (this issue). However, his critical commentary is marred by important omissions, particularly of reference to debates about the teaching of reading and to the statutory status of the National Curriculum for English. His alternative suggestions on the use of 'child development' evidence lack methodological detail and are only partly formulated. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Stimulated recall (SR) is a family of introspective research procedures through which cognitive processes can be investigated by inviting subjects to recall, when prompted by a video sequence, their concurrent thinking during that event. Variations of the generic approach are widely used and many of the studies treat SR as non-problematic. The article reviews the strengths and weaknesses of SR and exemplifies its use in a study of non-deliberative decision-making by sports coaches. The study reaffirms the potential limitations of subjects reordering their accounts in response to activating deeper memory structures and in order to maintain biases of control and a priori theory affirmation. Nevertheless, the procedure successfully elicited expert accounts of decisions taken and maintained the benefits of the naturalistic context. The article concludes that SR is a valuable tool for investigating cognitive processes, although care has to be taken with research designs. The value is enhanced when there is immediacy of recall, consonance between questions and cognitive organisation, and indirect means of introspection in complex interactive contexts, such as the classroom. It has considerable potential in both research and as the basis of training programmes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Schools and teachers in England and Wales are under pressure to raise standards. Currently, there is little direct relationship between research activity and support for teachers in meeting these demands. The context for the article is teaching thinking which is being promoted as a means to raise standards by the current government. Teaching thinking includes the concepts of metacognition and transfer in its underpinnings but there is little practical assistance for teachers to make these concepts a reality in the classroom. The article describes 10 roles that teachers can perform to put these concepts into practice, which were identified by interviewing pupils who had been taught by teachers using the innovative practice of debriefing. The article discusses the broader issues of how teachers can be engaged in research and knowledge production in a more satisfying relationship than is currently the norm. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Prior to 1960, educational research and development in Britain was relatively small-scale. In the period reviewed, public funding expanded at an unprecedented rate, until research became an integral part of administration and policy. Government control over research grew as a consequence of increased funding. In the 1960s autonomy of research was seen as a bulwark of democracy, but by 1975 this claim had been set aside. The article reviews this shift of attitude through quotations from speeches and publications, reminding us of principles once held to be important. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article suggests that the professional educational research community is facing new challenges in the development of educational research training. In particular it argues that as the learning needs of the student population become more differentiated, there is a strong pressure to develop and evaluate the use of information and communications technologies (ICTs) to support research training in education. The article describes one response to this pressure: the development and evaluation of an interactive multimedia (IMM) resource, the Signposts for Educational Research CD-ROM. The CD-ROM is designed to be used by postgraduate students on a wide range of courses but is particularly aimed at those enrolled on part-time and distance education programmes. Typically, part-time students studying at a distance from their providing institution use print-based materials in combination with occasional attendance at residential study schools; such residential schools frequently represent the only occasions on which tutors and students come together. Many distance learners therefore have limited contact with their tutors and peers, and only limited access to site-based resources. At the same time, because of their different prior experiences of formal academic study, there is considerable diversity in the individual needs of students registered on part-time and distance education programmes. This distinctive student profile indicates highly differentiated training requirements and thus the need for personal and customised support for research training. One of the reasons for producing the Signposts CD-ROM was the perceived need to offer such students alternative modes of learning support. It is argued that the flexible structure of IMM materials may be effective in meeting the individual needs of students while the use of affective material (in the form of a ‘peer voice’) may help to build the confidence, and lessen the isolation, of the distance learner. The article concludes with a discussion of the impact on learning of IMM resources. In particular, it asks whether research students can ‘become critical’ in a multimedia environment, and attempts to assess some of the methodological difficulties involved in evaluating the use of IMM to support learning in this context. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses key issues concerning the characteristics of research in education in Great Britain in 1979. Key issues discussed include key improvements in British educational research, the emergence of new estates and cultures that have influenced the methodology and the manner in which educational research projects are carried out and the technical and methodological issues to be resolved to establish conceptual and technical research norms based on the recognition of educational criteria.

The article discusses issues in teacher research in terms of two distinct but related research fields, the action research and case study, in Great Britain. The author defines action research as a response to the gap between theory and practice within the educational research process and case study as a response to the methodological bias inherent in that process. In action research, the question of control centered on the relation between teacher and researcher while it focused on the relative status of the various methods used by researcher in case study. According to the author, the link between action research and the case study approach may be a significant factor affecting the style of classroom research in the country.

The authors' evaluation of their experience of in-service education leads to a re-consideration of educational theory, the impact of research on teachers, the interaction between educational institutions, the function of peer-group learning, the expansion of school-based in-service education and the networking of curriculum development agencies. This experience provides an empirical and ideological basis for justifying school-based curriculum research. It suggests that models of the teacher as researcher can generate theories of education that will impinge more strongly on teachers and teaching, providing they are genuinely 'school-based'. Action research, in the context of school-centred, problem-solving approaches to in-service education, is presented as a productive way forward providing that different educational agencies recognise the value of applied research and development, appreciate the importance of small scale and co-operative research and understand that research outcomes may have more to do with sensitising individual teachers than shaping educational policy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A number of recent studies have questioned the conclusion that 'schools don't make a difference'. A brief review of earlier studies suggests a number of key questions which would result in significant increments to our knowledge and understanding of issues of school effectiveness. More recent studies are then examined in the light of these criteria and, in turn, suggest some further questions. It is argued that the research base for any conclusions about school effectiveness is weaker than previously thought but that, in general, the findings from all the studies are fairly consistent. Some suggestions for reanalysing existing studies and for extending the range of questions addressed are put forward. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents an overview of homework research in Great Britain that is intended to serve as a basis for the identification of several vital methodological and conceptual problems and the stimulation of some interest in what has been a somehow neglected area of educational research. Key issues discussed include the relationship between various homework practices and the achievement of children at the secondary and primary school levels, as well as the issues' implications for educational research and education.

The article discusses key issues concerning alternative educational procedures available to educational researchers in Great Britain in 1979. Key issues discussed include improvements in educational research both in conception and methods, the challenge of recognizing the specificity of education as a subject of investigation, the emergence of a new focus on the processes of education as the result of historical events following educational reforms and the development of new curricula and the issues' implications for educational research.