At the same time, there became a need to develop a research tradition within
universities (though—most important—not necessarily within the relatively new
education departments), which would inform policy makers on education, on the
training of teachers and on their professional development.
Three examples illustrate this.
First, the Rutter Report ( 1979 ), in recognising the influence of social disadvan-
tage, showed how certain kinds of intervention could make a considerable difference
to children—thereby countering the pervasive influence of the view that the effects
of social and economic disadvantage were so powerful that school could make little
or no difference. Rutter and his team provided detailed case studies of twelve schools
from similar social and economically disadvantaged areas and showed considerable
difference in achievement, differences which could only be explained by the quality
of the teaching in the school. This research gave rise to the development within
education departments of further fruitful research into school effectiveness and
school improvement. (see, for example, Mortimore and Sammons 1997 ).
Second, the establishment in the 1970s and 1980s of‘Educational Priority
Areas’followed the research of Halsey ( 1972 ), on the relation of educational
performance to social conditions. Thus began what was referred to as‘the political
arithmetic’tradition in the sociology of education’, namely, quantitative research
which requires the gathering of hard data, especially in relation to gender, ethnicity
and social class, and of discovering the correlation of such data with subsequent
performance and achievement. There is, of course, a philosophical question about
the extent to which strong correlations constitute causal relations, but, in the
shaping of policy, such powerful connections clearly are, and need to be,
influential.
Third, the long standing debate on selection for different kinds of school (in
England, the selection for grammar schools of 20% of the 11 year-old age cohort)
depended on the research, published through learned journals, on the nature of
intelligence—itsfixed or movable nature and its measurement. The research of
Cyril Burt, itself arising from the research of Galton (whose laboratory was at
University College London), pointed to thefixed hereditary nature of intelligence
and of the accuracy of the IQ tests in determining what kind of education (and
therefore school) a student should have after the age of 11. It was, however, the
work of another psychologist, Philip Vernon, which demonstrated that, rather than
the intelligence quotient beingfixed, it could be raised by as many as 14 points
through coaching, thereby undermining the basis for selection at age 11.
These three examples show how research has influenced educational policy, with
implications for educational practice. But one interesting feature of these researches
is that they did not arise from within education departments. Michael Rutter was
Director of the Institute of Psychiatry, Halsey was Director of the Department of
Social Policy at the University of Oxford, Heath was a Fellow of New College
Oxford, Burt was an educational psychologist employed by the London County
Council. Where major research, which guides educational policy, arises from within
the distinctive disciplines of sociology or psychology, then there would seem to be
no need for education departments to undertake such research. Such departments
612 R. Pring