This article focuses on how we perceive new technology and technological development within educational settings, and seeks to establish a critical link between the rhetoric of information and communications technology (ICT) and what Biesta called "the new language of learning". Within this "new language" the learner is a consumer, with needs that…

The idea of teachers and teacher educators engaging in research is not, in itself, new, but in recent years the propagation of this idea seems to have become really popular. This growing popularity brings the risk that practitioner research will degenerate into an increasingly vague and obscure "container concept". The aim of this article is to…

Many academics in the past have attempted to provide an overview of the general and common elements and "trends" in contemporary, international education policy, focusing mainly on the most advanced--economically and technologically--countries of the "West": from the increasing adoption of market ideologies in (public) education, to the…

This article explores the linkage between the idea of a knowledge society and effects of internationalisation in education policy-making. The fact that the idea of a knowledge society is widely shared is brought together with an explanation of increasing dynamics in education politics. The central argument is that the idea of a knowledge society…

The field of education research has grown enormously in England over the last 25 years--in size, complexity, forms of production and purpose. It has been shaped by governmental, market and production changes, and it appears to be moving outside the university sector as well. The British Educational Research Association is trying to map the field…

This article offers a descriptive and analytical account of the current state of educational research in Scotland, viewed against the background of constitutional change within the United Kingdom and debates about the nature, function and quality of research activity and output. It starts by considering how to undertake the task in hand and argues…

This article explores the relationships between educational research and the state. However, the aim is not to construct idealised versions of what the relationship between research and educational policy ought to be, but rather to examine the ways in which the state is able to influence the priorities of educational research through its role as…

This article explores differences between traditions in relation to teaching and learning and aims to highlight the ways in which the study of the Central European and Northern European traditions of Didaktik has offered new dimensions to and fresh insights on the notion of reflective practice. In particular these traditions are seen to offer…

"Didaktik" is at the centre of most school teaching and teacher education in Continental Europe, but at the same time almost unknown in the English speaking world. The article gives a brief outline of the history and the common core of Didaktik, of its current situation, and of the basic differences compared to the Anglo-American concept of…

In this article, the author attempts to show how French disciplinary "didactiques" were created and have developed. At the beginning, nobody could forecast the future and whether the "didactiques" would one day be recognised by the academic and instructional systems. The French "didactiques" are strongly based on school subject matters. Since the…

This article provides an overview of the gradual development, in the span of two decades (1985-2005), of a theorisation which has come to be known as the Anthropological Theory of the Didactic (ATD). It stresses important stages in the dismissing--based on both fact and theory--of some widespread views of teaching and learning, and the…

This article focuses on student participation in classrooms. It aims to demonstrate that effective cultivation of educational experience in schools will lead to a new perspective on the process of teaching and learning. There are no privileged methods of teaching and learning, but most of the teachers have in mind some fuzzy ideas of what good…

The relation between teaching, instruction and children's learning arises whenever models of the teaching-learning process are discussed or whenever problems of learning occur. Despite massive research efforts we still know little about how differences in learning activities are related to students' learning. The primacy of teachers and teaching…

This article considers the landscape for educational research in the smallest country of the United Kingdom, Northern Ireland. As elsewhere, educational research exists in political and economic circumstances that have considerable influence on its direction, nature and purpose and this article seeks to contextualise these influences. Northern…

Armin Gretler passed away on 6 October 2005. Armin was a founder member of the EERA and served on its Council, representing Switzerland. He was a sociologist and founding director of the Swiss Coordination Centre for Research in Education in 1971. He remained Director until retiring in 1999. Prior to that he had been working as a consultant for…