This report explores the first two OECD reviews ever on national educational R&D systems in England and New Zealand. It shows that OECD countries are increasingly taking innovative research initiatives in order to improve the knowledge base in education for teachers and policy makers.

This book is an ambitious attempt to address issues of knowledge production and sharing through a better understanding of knowledge and learning processes at a sectorial level.

This book examines the transformations of epistemic governance in education, the way in which some actors are shaping new knowledge, and how that new knowledge impacts other actors in charge of implementing this knowledge in the context of the decision-making process and practice. The book describes knowledge-based and evidence-based technologies that produce new modes of representation, cognitive categories, and value-based judgements which determine and guide actions and interactions between researchers, experts and policy-makers. It explores several major social theories and concepts, analysing the transformation of the relationship between educational and social sciences and politics. In the light of epistemic governance being linked to transformations of academic capitalism, the book describes the ways in which academics engaged in heterogeneous networks are capable of developing new interactions as well as facing new trials imposed on them by the changing conditions of producing knowledge in their scientific community and within their institutions. Knowledge is power. It is materialized in metrics, policy instruments and embedded in networks. The governance of European higher education, insightfully argues Romuald Normand, is not structured by hierarchical public policies, by governmental exercise of authority or heroic decision making. Normand makes a sophisticated intellectual argument, building upon the work of Foucault, Latour (Sociology of science), and the pragmatic sociology of Boltanski and Thévenot (sociology of justification) in order to precisely analyse Europe‘s higher education through the circulation of ideas and instruments. Based upon precise research, the book is a major contribution to the understanding of high education in a capitalist Europe, beyond the simple idea of neo liberalism. Normand, provocatively, even suggests the making of a European Homo Academicus. This is an innovative and important book for public policy, European Studies and the sociology of Education. Patrick le Galès, FBA, CNRS Research Professor, Centre d’Etudes Européennes, Sciences Po, Paris, France

Political Pressures on Educational and Social Research draws upon a variety of theoretical and methodological approaches to consider the problems that can arise when research findings diverge from political directions for policy. Chapters explore the impacts this can have on the researchers, as well as the influence it has on the research, including the methodology and the publication of results. The book offers innovative ways of seeing how these connect, overlap and interact, revealing particular issues of concern for researchers and evaluators in the context of research internationally. Key topics include the power and positioning of research, evidence based policy development, ethics and the importance of research that seeks to explore and discover knowledge. The book is divided into two sections. The first presents chapters from international academics, which provide a theoretical underpinning and discussion of power, policy, ethics and their influence on research resourcing, autonomy, purpose and methodology. The second section explores specific case studies and instances from the authors’ own experiences in the field. This book offers an interesting and enlightening insight into the sometimes political nature of research and will appeal to researchers, evaluators and postgraduate students in the fields of education and the social sciences. It will be of particular interest to those studying research methods.

Provides relevant theoretical frameworks, latest empirical research findings, and practitioners' best practices in the area of organizational memory.

This book presents an entirely new approach to professional learning based on perspectives of the knowledge society and, in particular, an interpretation of Knorr Cetina’s work on scientific ‘epistemic cultures’. Starting with a conceptual chapter and followed by a suite of empirical studies from accountancy, education, nursing and software engineering, the book elaborates how: a) knowledge production and circulation take distinct forms in those fields; b) how the knowledge objects of practice in those fields engross and engage professionals and, in the process, people and knowledge are transformed by this engagement. By foregrounding an explicit concern for the role of knowledge in professional learning, the book goes much farther than the current fashion for describing ‘practice-based learning’. It will therefore be of considerable interest to the research, policy, practitioner and student communities involved with professional education/learning or interested in innovation and knowledge development in the professions.

Across the OECD, enormous effort and investment has been made to reinforce the quality, production and use of education research in policy and practice. Despite this, using research in education remains a challenge for many countries and systems.

This book brings together up-to-date statistics, case studies and policy reports on the major trends and developments in cross-border post-secondary education in North America, Europe, and the Asia Pacific region.

This book analyses and compares concretely the processes of knowledge production, dissemination and use in the engineering, the information and communication technology, the health and the education sectors.