Lisa Pettifer, head of professional development in a large secondary school in England, proclaimed in her blog post Living with research in 2015 that, from a practitioner perspective, ‘…the call for teaching to become more of a research-based profession … raises a number of problems for teachers, many of whom cite contradictions in the notion of educational research itself’.
She spoke of the perceived distance between notions of academic research and what she termed ‘the immediate and unpredictable physical world of childhood’; whereby childhood could be replaced by any context for learners.
This blog special issue has resulted from a coming together of researchers in a range of education settings (primary, secondary, tertiary and higher education institutions (HEIs)) over a number of BERA events during 2020–22.
These have created spaces for dialogue about what research means and how research is promoted and conducted in non-HEI settings. This issue deepens that dialogue with rich insights from diverse settings and by researchers and practitioners.
