Emerging Methodological Challenges for Educational Research

This concluding chapter surveys some of the conceptual and practical challenges encountered by producers and users of educational research. It synthesises some of the implications of earlier chapters in the book, but also draws on ideas about the changing relationships between evidence, theory and action in educational prac-tice. The chapter explores the argument that exponential growth in the availability of raw information about educational activities and outcomes raises questions about the value that (professional) educational researchers can offer to the primary actors in teaching and learning. The shift from data scarcity to information over-load and competition for attention puts a premium on methods for linking com-plex, heterogeneous evidence to action. Seen in this light, a major challenge and opportunity for educational researchers is to help develop and disseminate meth-ods for moving between different sources of knowledge and ways of knowing.

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