When will we ever learn?

In his play Les Femmes Savantes (“The Wise Women”), the 17th-century French dramatist, Molière, satirised the contemporary cult of la préciosité (or “preciousness”). It had become the fashion in learned society to speak in an extravagant and prolix manner as a means of demonstrating erudition. Instead of referring to one’s teeth, for example, the pretentious, fashionable elite would instead talk of l’ameublement de la bouche (literally, “the furniture of the mouth”). I am reminded of this famous play, with embarrassing frequency, when I read much contemporary educational “research”, especially that emanating from a supposedly post-modernist perspective. Rhetoric appears to have replaced reason and assertion appears to have replaced the need for empirical fact. It is apparent to almost everyone, except to many educational researchers themselves, that much contemporary educational research has little relevance to, or has little potential to inform, educational practice. I believe passionately that we shall only make progress in education when we base educational decision-making on the findings from empirical, and where possible experimental, educational psychological research. I welcome the opportunity to provide a personal perspective on developments in educational psychology over the past 25 years.