Quality Research in Education

1. Quality Research in Education Madeleine Arnot Faculty of Education University of Cambridge

2. Democratic Values, Gender and Citizenship • The context • Initial premises • Democratic research: themes • The language of research • Quality criteria, levels and relevance • The conditions of educational research • The challenge

3. The Context • Bengt Molander, Professor of Philosophy, Norwegian University of Science and Technology Trondheim. • Stefan Hopmann, Professor of School and Educational Research, University of Vienna. • Madeleine Arnot, Professor of Sociology of Education, University of Cambridge.

4. Initial premises • The research is capable of being internationally recognised by peers as making an original contribution to the field of knowledge. • The research offers high level conceptual thinking and/or rigorous, ethical, empirical investigations into education. (c) The research provides strong, sound evidence on which to base educational policy and practice.

5. Democratic Research Themes Citizenship Spaces and Values • Teachers’ political values, civic society, national identities, global contexts Pedagogic Research • Democratic learning, classroom research and participatory, democratic pedagogies Social Inequalities • Social class, race and ethnicity, identity research, gender theory, social exclusion. Democratic Values • Integrative research and international debates about democracy

6. The Language of Research • What is the major scholarly intellectual contribution (or result) so far? • What (empirical/conceptual) challenges did you face and how did you meet that challenge? • Were any of your findings unexpected? • What is particularly valuable/important about your research for the international field? • How do you intend to make your results accessible nationally and internationally?

7. Democratic Values, Gender and Citizenship • International and future prospects strengthened by interdisciplinarity. • National reform agenda is strong but can be too normative, with strong safety nets. • Possibilities of a Swedish school of thought about educating for democracy within globalised knowledge economy. • Larger studies needed, wider audiences for research

8. Some findings • Strong normative culture taking democratic values and curricular for granted. • Seeming lack of familiarity with language of research or lack of engagement with research epistemology and methodology. • Narrow national audience with reliance on doctoral outputs.

9. Rigour Originality Significance Criticality Reflexivity Impact Quality Criteria

10. The Conditions of Educational Research • The need to fund ‘high quality basic research’ • The need for research to‘correspond to the needs within teacher training and professional pedagogic activities’. • Research would need to build research capacity across educational institutions.

11. The challenges • How best can educational research serve the educational community? • What is the best way to promote research cultures amongst teacher education? • What is the proper place for graduate research? • How might internationally recognised research be encouraged? • What other ways can high quality educational research be promoted?

12. Defining the Quality of Research • Is the model appropriate for the culture and political goals of Swedish educational faculties and teacher training institutions? • How does such a goal mesh with the national imperatives of restructuring educational teaching and research communities? • What are the implications of this model for promoting research in the educational community?