Leading Education: The Distinct Contributions of Educational Research and Researchers
For educational researchers, being professionally responsible requires decision-making and action in the public interest as well as in the interest of professions, and implies discretionary judgement For educational researchers, being professionally responsible requires decision-making and action and relative autonomy. Consequently, there is a particular challenge for researchers within a policy environment that increasingly requires knowledge on ‘what works’. They are faced with short-term and performance oriented forms of accountability and tendencies of privatization and commercialisation in education research. These trends compete with a wish for rigour and public commitment of educational research and thus questions arise on who and what can and should lead educational research, as a contribution to a quality education for all and at all levels.
There is general recognition that leadership encompasses beliefs, values and the cultivation of dispositions; that leadership formation is not just the preserve of the few, the born leaders, but everyone has a contribution to make in this regard. Consequently, researchers have an individual and collective responsibility to meet this leadership challenge through their work.
In addition to reports on their research and scholarship from conceptual, theoretical and practical perspectives, participants are invited to address in what ways their work sheds light on the contemporary educational research landscape. By contributing from this perspective, you are being provoked into finding new compass readings that have generative potential towards the cultivation of a language of education and its leadership formation that promotes educational research as a common good while finding continuity in the challenges and changes that this represents, and in the process contributing to the leading capacity of education, the distinct contribution of research while exercising your responsibility in this regard.
You can download the ECER 2016 Call for Proposals and Networks' Special Calls.