Purpose: It is unfortunate yet true that in India, research starts and ends with a Ph.D. The steady decline in the quality of doctoral research has been an articulated concern among Indian academics at a time when research and innovation should be a priority. One of the feasible ways of resurrecting or reconstructing Indian research is to open up…

Calls to improve relationships between research and practice abound, among them efforts to help researchers to work in partnership with and communicate more effectively with policy and practice audiences, informing those that govern and design educational policies and those charged with implementation in schools and classrooms, respectively. These…

Across many years of teaching Research Methods and assessing many applications for admission into higher degree studies which require an understanding of theories, principles, strategies and skills needed to complete a higher degree such as a Masters or a PhD, one of the things I have found problematic for many students is the inability to…

In this exploratory study the authors ask students enrolled in a credit-bearing undergraduate research methods course to rank and evaluate the troublesome, transformative, and integrative nature of the six frames currently comprising the "Framework for Information Literacy for Higher Education." The results indicate that students have…

This document explains the VET Applied Research Developmental Framework, created as part of a project that explored how the vocational education and training (VET) sector could broaden its engagement in Australia's research and development (R&D) and innovation systems. Achieving this engagement will rely significantly on building the…

Purpose: Practice-based research is proposed as an additional way to bridge the divide between research and practice. Method: The article compares the traditional, laboratory-based research with research that is generated from practice: practice-based research. The defining features of each are described, with an emphasis on contrasting internal…

Background: One of the reasons for the slow and uncertain translation of research into practice is likely due to the emphasis in science on explanatory models and efficacy designs rather than more pragmatic approaches. Methods: Following a brief definition of what constitutes a pragmatic approach, I provide examples of pragmatic methods, measures,…

One of the greatest challenges in education today is to adapt and respond to a linguistically and culturally diverse world, and to combat social disintegration and discrimination. Participatory and collaborative action research represents an empowering and emancipatory approach to this challenge because the "target groups" become…

Too often, researchers get a bad name for engaging in inquiry that is inaccessible to the practitioner and policy communities who could most benefit from it. Although speaking to others in the scholarly community is important, researchers must also be able to translate their results into more accessible language for multiple audiences. This…

This article draws on the articulation of a value for reflexivity that has accumulated within qualitative methods debates in the past decade. It demonstrates how reflexivity is interwoven with the concept of ethical mindfulness. The argument has developed from a consideration of the ethical dilemmas that were a salient aspect of an ongoing…

The way in which researchers view education differs fundamentally from the way in which teachers view education. These different outlooks are (partly) a consequence of the different work roles of researchers and teachers. This article explores the question of whether it is really inevitable that research and practice each establish different views…

Guidelines to help ensure that educational research is meaningful and important include (1) have confidence in your own conviction and methods; (2) remember that the conduct of research is an artistic activity; and (3) try to situate the inquiry in a social and historical context to increase its meaning. (SLD)

Based on a research project that sought to train instructors to conduct action research in a real-life context, this handbook was created to help literacy instructors to use action research in workplace education programs. The handbook is organized in three parts. The first part describes action research as a type of practice-based research. It…

This paper, which is intended to assist adult literacy practitioners interested in conducting research about their programs, discusses the four stages of the action research process: identifying questions to guide the research, collecting information to answer the questions, analyzing the information collected, and sharing the results with others.…

This article discusses concerns with the No Child Left Behind definition of scientifically based research and its preference for random-assignment experiments from a single/within subject research perspective. A comprehensive program of research that can focus on the bridging the gap between research and practice is proposed. (CR)