This essay considers how strategies and perspectives from contemporary art can suggest new questions for educational research. Although arts-based research has become more prominent lately, the concern of this paper is that the arts have become used primarily as decorative features to educational research (to further illuminate, depict, and explain the ambiguities and complexities of educational practices, see Donmoyer 1997), rather than deeply moving or disorientating perspectives on education. Another stimulant for looking into contemporary art is the concern that education must focus more on the edges of what is understood, rather than on the centers (see, for example, Fox 1995). The essay uses examples to demonstrate how a number of themes from contemporary art can be interpreted to redirect our curiosity about educational practices, policies, and theories. The paper concludes that further consideration of contemporary art can move researchers to ask more varied questions, especially about the wisdom of our progressive, critical, or humanistic views of students and learning that we have built over this century.

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In this short article, a group of educational psychologist representatives on the DfEE Working Group on the future role and training of educational psychologists and their Services, consider some of the outcomes of the ‘Role’ Report. They describe the positive aspects of the Report, especially its ambitious description of what educational psychologists can do to make a difference. They also describe some of the problems of impact and implementation associated with the report. Rob Stoker is Principal Educational Psychologist for the London Borough of Westminster and a Director of Applied Psychology Associates; Glenys Fox is an HMI; Irvine Gersch is Professor and Director of Professional Training in Educational Psychology at the University of East London; Jackie Lown is Specialist Senior Educational Psychologist in York, and is also seconded to the University of Sheffield, where she works as an academic and professional tutor; and Sue Morris is Director of Professional Training in Educational Psychology at the University of Birmingham.

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