Grounding the Democratic Imagination: Developing the Relationship Between Research and Policy in Education (Professorial Lectures)

An Inaugural Professorial Lecture How can research – the scholarly pursuit of ‘truth’ – have a more responsive relationship with political decision-making in education? The ‘evidence-based education’ agenda represents a rationalist ideal, in which research provides reliable evidence on which to base public policy. But this is hard to realise, because of: the nature of knowledge and knowledge creation; the nature of decision-making in policy and political arenas; the difference in assumptions, cultures and priorities between research and policy. In this lecture Lesley Saunders highlights some ways forward, and illustrates these with examples of what the General Teaching Council is working to accomplish. She concludes with a personal meditation on the role of creativity and the imagination, and makes an appeal for research to be the ‘rich ground in which a democratic vision of education is rooted and can flourish’.