The role of educational research in transforming educational policy and practice

Abstract

The paper discusses the role of educational research in transforming educational policy and practice. Our aim was to critically illuminate the possibilities, range and limitation soft he evidence-based concept of education reform. This concept implies an intensive re-examination of the epistemology of educational science, with the emphasis on studying the causal and consequential relations in education. It demands methodological rigour in educational research, culminating in the random sample experiment. It is also perceived that there is the problem of systematic dissemination and application of the obtained scientific findings in educational practice. On the other hand, the critics of this concept have observed that it is neo-positivist, mono-methodological, since it favors quantitative research, and as such insufficient for explaining and understanding educational phenomena and the contexts in which educational innovations are studied. At the same time, during the last decade, there has been another reconsideration of the role of scientific in forming of practitioners in their everyday work, as well as of the relation between research and the development of educational policy. Finally, philosophers of education again insist on the moral instead of on instrumental nature of educational practice. Theoretical analysis of the concept of evidence-based transformation of education has been supplemented by an analysis of social and institutional conditions in which the modern science of education develops. [Projekat Ministarstva nauke Republike Srbije, br. 179060: Modeli procenjivanja i strategije unapređivanja kvaliteta obrazovanja u Srbiji]

Keywords

• educational research
• educational policy
• evidence-based education