Title Page
Copyright Page
Contents
Acknowledgements
About the Author
Foreword
Prologue: The Orthodoxies of Educational Research
Chapter 1: Theories, Fashions and the Need for Pragmatism
Introduction: Being lost in other peopleโs theories
On fashions, confessions and โcon-fashionsโ
Problems with being non-pragmatic
Theory, the very idea
Theory of educational and social research: Paradigms or purposes?
Three options or an integrative view?
The most difficult question: Why do research at all?
Conclusion: Being pragmatic without becoming a pragmatist
Five questions for discussion and further consideration
Chapter 2: Making Education Better
Introduction: Improving education through research
TLRPโs ten principles for effective pedagogy
Educational improvement: Effectiveness or change for the better?
Making education work: Causality or complexity?
The practical roles of research
Conclusions
Five questions for discussion and further consideration
Chapter 3: โWhat Worksโ Is Not Enough
Introduction: Towards an evidence-based profession?
Evidence about โwhat worksโ?
Epistemology: Representation or transaction?
Ontology: Causality or complexity?
Practice: Application or incorporation?
From evidence-based to value-based education
Five questions for discussion and further consideration
Chapter 4: The Practice of Education
Introduction: A case for the practical
The past: The deliberative tradition in education
The present: What is different?
The future: Where to go and what to do?
Conclusion
Five questions for discussion and further consideration
Chapter 5: Configurations of Educational Research
Introduction
The Anglo-American configuration
The case for educational theory
The Continental configuration
The discipline of โPรคdagogikโ
Discussion
Five questions for discussion and further consideration
Chapter 6: Education, Measurement and Democracy
Introduction: Education in an age of measurement
The democratization of the professions
Three post-democratic distortions
The role of measurement
Reclaiming a space for democratic professionalism
Conceptualizing the democratic professional
Concluding remarks
Five questions for discussion and further consideration
Chapter 7: Knowledge Reconsidered
Introduction: Epistemology and the mind-world scheme
The transactional theory of knowing
Experience, reality and knowledge
Consequences of pragmatism
Conclusion: Beyond objectivism and relativism
Five questions for discussion and further consideration
Chapter 8: The Political Economy of Academic Publishing
Introduction: The sorcererโs apprentice syndrome
Setting academic publishing free?
The epistemic fallacy: Is knowledge the business of โthe knowledge businessโ?
A crisis in rationality
Conclusions
Five questions for discussion and further consideration
Epilogue: Too Much Research?
References
Index
