The importance of collaboration for knowledge co‐construction in ‘close‐to‐practice’ research

Abstract

This commentary is offered in response to the British Educational Research Association (BERA)'s commissioned report on close-to-practice research. In conducting a rapid evidence assessment coupled with a small number of qualitative interviews, the report represents an overly dichotomised and partial approach to understanding the relationships between research and practice, and the nature of knowledge generated within such relationships. Specifically, the report fails to adequately address the central importance of collaboration to the generation of knowledge and assumes that knowledge is either academic research or practitioner enquiry, without considering a more integrated, co-constructed 'third space'. I argue that practice-focused research should be fundamentally concerned with making an impact on practice and, therefore, effective collaboration between research and practice necessarily entails grappling with issues of power and democratisation. These are values that underpin and shape research in important ways that must be considered in conceptualisations of methodological quality. I also raise questions about the transparency and quality of decision-making in the close-to-practice BERA report, including whether the six papers identified as 'high quality' by the authors would meet their own definition. Their report is not definitive, but rather a catalyst for further discussion. I offer suggestions for some practical steps for how BERA could work to provide a more holistic framing for this vital field of inquiry.

People and practice: defining education as an academic discipline

“…This is of course a long‐standing area of debate, for example related to issues about knowledge mobilisation raised more than a decade ago (Pollard & Oancea, 2010), the kind of seminal work that Hordern might have cited. Hordern also raises the point that research methodology is related to the overall purposes of, and rationale for, any research project, but this is not the simple relationship between method X and value position Y that Hordern, and Parsons (2021), argue in their responses to our paper.…”

“…A question about the extent to which the final selection of published CtP studies in our REA met the criteria we articulated for ‘high quality CtP research’, raised in the response by Parsons (2021), is another fruitful line of enquiry that enables people to build on the BERA CtP work. If the CtP criteria could be reflected on, for example in relation to a range of studies described by Parsons as ‘participatory’, further important insights could follow.…”

“…Parsons’s main argument is that we neglect collaboration in education research: ‘the report fails to adequately address the central importance of collaboration’ (Parsons, 2021, p. 1). Yet as she also points out, collaboration is central to the new definition that we established as one outcome of our research: CtP research in education is research that ‘focuses on issues defined by practitioners as relevant to their practice, and involves collaboration between people whose main expertise is in research, in educational practice, or both’ (Wyse et al ., 2020, p. 5, italics added).…”

“…This is a Response from the BERA Close‐to‐Practice Research Project Team to Hordern (2021), Takayama and Nishioka (2021), Kelchtermans (2021) and Parsons (2021), published as a ‘special section’ in the British Education Research Journal . Education research that ‘focuses on issues defined by practitioners as relevant to their practice, and involves collaboration between people whose main expertise is in research, in educational practice, or both’ (Wyse et al ., 2020, p. 5) has been the source of a range of debates relevant to understanding the development of education as an academic discipline.…”

Groundhog day for inclusive education

“…Such supposed solutions ignore the fact that education systems are, in Biesta's (2020) terms, open, semiotic and recursive, and, as such, one thing does not straightforwardly cause another. We need, as Florian (2014), Nind (2017), Parsons (2021) and others have argued, new kinds of research – research that respects local differences and incorporates local actors, whether these be teachers, parents or students themselves.…”