ideology (as in the case of selection at age 11 for different kinds of schooling).
More importantly, however, is the meaning of‘what works’. Unfavourable com-
parisons were made to medical research where such research not only identifies the
cause of illness but also provides the appropriate cure.
The third reason given for the inadequacy of educational research was that it did
not help teachers in their professional practice (for example, demonstrating the most
appropriate teaching methods). Can there not, following the example of medicine,
be a‘science of teaching’—that is, the creation of systematically tested hypotheses
predicting exactly what will happen if one follows a particular course of action? For
example, a National Strategy for reading in secondary schools was universally
instituted, based on research, to improve the‘outputs’as measured on tests. A 328
page book, including‘booster classes’, showed‘exactly how teachers should gear
their teaching to the precise requirements of the tests’(Mansell 2007, p. 59). The
difficulties here, however, are several. One is that such strategies are disengaged
from the complex social conditions and relations within the teaching setting which
require professional judgment on the part of the teacher, not simply the‘delivery’of
a set of prescriptions irrespective of context and learners. In pursuit of a more
scientific style of research, the science of‘deliverology’has arisen defined in terms
of measurable targets and performance indicators (seewww.kypost.com/dpp/news/
state/institute-to-help-ramp-up-educational-improvement).
The fourth reason given by the Hillage Report was that educational research is
fragmented—lots of bits and pieces which, though often addressing similar questions,
start from different positions or use different samples, not creating a coherent and
reliable basis for practice or policy. Again, adverse comparisons are made with
medicine. Hargreaves ( 1996 ), drawing upon a North American critique of educational
research and his own Leverhulme funded project, argued that, despite the enormous
amount of money spent on research and the large number of people who claim to be
active researchers, there was not the cumulative body of relevant knowledge which
would enable teaching to be (like medicine) a research-based profession. For it to be
so, it would be necessary to change,first, the content of that research, and, second, the
control and sponsorship of it. Content would need to focus on the practice of teaching
and learning in order to build up sufficient, well-tested bodies of knowledge to serve as
guidelines for professional practice in, say, the teaching of reading or in the grouping
of pupils in classrooms. Of course, such a corpus of knowledge would be complex and
would need to be usedflexibly because situations, context and personalities of both
teacher and learner affect the relevance of the research conclusions. None the less,
such a research exercise would seem possible. Teachers would need to be involved (as
doctors are in the development of research-based medicine) in identifying research
needs, in formulating the questions which respond to these needs and in collecting the
data to make it‘rootedfirmly in the day-to-day professional practices’. The rela-
tionship between‘professional researchers’and teachers would be more integrated in
the setting of agendas and in the undertaking of the research. This was reiterating what
Stenhouse ( 1975 , Chap. 10) had argued, namely, that only the teachers could
appreciate, and have access to, the complexity of data required to understand the
interactions of the classroom.
614 R. Pring