Defining Educational Research: A Perspective of/on Presidential Addresses and the Australian Association for Research in Education

Oct 15, 2026

Uploaded by Jasmine

This paper defines educational research and examines how the Australian Association for Research in Education (AARE) has represented and shaped the field across forty years. Evidence is drawn from AARE Presidential Addresses, showing increasing complexity and diversity, global policy emergence, social-science theoretical and methodological developments, and new research accountabilities such as ERA. The paper argues evidence-based public management and ERA may narrow and reframe the field’s usefulness for policymakers and practitioners.

LanguageEnglish

CategoryResearch & Report

FormatPDF

Pages29

Reading Time1 h 13 min

AccessFree to download

Abstract

Introduction

Defining educational research as a field

Purposes, readership, dissemination, and impact

Research quality and accountability frameworks

Relationships among education research, policy, and practice

Defining Educational Research: A Perspective of/on Presidential Addresses and the Australian Association for Research in Education 1 Bob Lingard The University of Queensland Trevor Gale University of South Australia Abstract This paper is concerned with the definition of the field of educational research and the changing and developing role of the Australian Association for Research in Education (AARE) in representing and constituting this field. The evidence for the argument is derived from AARE Presidential Addresses across its 40-year history. The paper documents the enhanced complexity and diversity of the field over these 40 years, including the emergence of a global educational policy field, theoretical and methodological developments in the social sciences and new research accountabilities such as the Excellence in Research for Australia (ERA) measure. Specifically, the paper suggests that the evidence-based movement in public management and education policy, and the introduction of the ERA, potentially limit and redefine the field of educational research, reducing the usefulness and relevance of educational research to policymakers and practitioners. This arises from a failure to recognise that Education is both afield of research and afield of policy and practice. Located against both developments, the paper argues for a principled eclecticism framed by a reassessment of quality, which can be applied to the huge variety of methodologies, theories, epistemologies and topics legitimately utilised and addressed within the field of educational research. At the sametime, the paper argues the need to globalise the educational research imagination and deparochialise educational research. This call is located within a broader argument suggesting the need for a new social imaginary (in a post-neoliberal context of the global financial crisis) to frame educational policy and practice and the contribution that educational theory and research might make to its constitution. In relation to this, the paper considers the difficulties that political representations of such a new imaginary The Australian Educational Researcher, Volume 37, Number 1, April 2010 •21 BOB LINGARD AND TREVOR GALE might entail for the President and the Association, given the variety of its membership and huge diversity of its research interests. Introduction The purpose of this paper is to plot, evaluate and contribute to definitions of education research and its functions and purposes in a changing world, and to consider its impact, broadly defined, in actual and desirable or normative terms. We seek to do this from the perspective of the Australian Association for Education Research (AARE), the premier and omnibus association of education researchers in Australia. In particular, our analysis draws on the Presidential Addresses delivered at the Association’s Annual Conference since its inception in 1970, specifically those from 1974,2 when the practice of publishing these Addresses in the Association’s journal, the “Australian Educational Researcher”(AER), first began. We use our research on the Addresses to capture issues in education research, which have been traversed in differing ways, sometimes explicitly, sometimes implicitly, by these Addresses. These include defining education research as a field, including AARE’s location within that field and the positionings of the Presidents and their respective Addresses therein. They also include the questions of the purposes of education research, which implies as well the issue of the readership or audiences for such research. The latter then touches on matters of dissemination and publication and diffusion and impact more broadly. This raises matters of publication and the various and competing outlets for publication of education research, nationally and increasingly on an international scale. Issues of quality, including associated politics, also come into play; quality, however,

FAQs

What sources does the paper use to support its argument?

It derives its evidence from AARE Presidential Addresses across the association’s 40-year history, especially addresses connected to publishing in the journal Australian Educational Researcher.

How does the paper characterize changes in the educational research field over forty years?

It highlights enhanced complexity and diversity, including the rise of a global educational policy field, developments in theories and methods in the social sciences, and increased research accountabilities such as ERA.

What concern does the paper raise about evidence-based policy and ERA?

It suggests that evidence-based public management approaches and the introduction of ERA may limit and redefine educational research, reducing its usefulness and relevance to policymakers and practitioners.

Oct 15, 2026

Uploaded by Jasmine