Educational research and policy: Epistemological considerations

Bridges, David and Watts, Michael (2008) Educational research and policy: Epistemological considerations. Journal of Philosophy of Education, 42. pp. 41-62. ISSN 0309-8249

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Abstract

This article is centrally concerned with the sort of knowledge that can and should inform educational policy—and it treats this as an epistemological question. It distinguishes this question from the more extensively explored question of what sort of knowledge in what form policy-makers do in fact commonly take into account. The article 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 that is not derived from research. One of the gaps between research of an empirical kind and policy is the normative gap. In the final section the article points to the inescapably normative character of educational policy. Of course the values that inform policy can be investigated empirically, but this kind of enquiry cannot tell us what we should do. There is 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 that underpin policy.

Item Type:	Article
Faculty \ School:	Faculty of Social Sciences > School of Education and Lifelong Learning
Depositing User:	Pure Connector
Date Deposited:	05 Feb 2014 13:28
Last Modified:	27 Oct 2023 01:07
URI:	https://ueaeprints.uea.ac.uk/id/eprint/45396
DOI:	10.1111/j.1467-9752.2008.00628.x

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