This article is a reflection on an area of particular interest in the current research environment, but which has not yet been explored satisfactorily in the education literature: the evaluation of educational research. The particular focus is on the UK context, but the article is informed by comparative evidence from six countries (gathered…

In the USA there is a contemporary discourse of crisis about the state of education and a parallel discourse that lays a large portion of the blame onto the poor quality of educational research. The solution offered is "scientific research." This article presents critiques of the core assumptions of the scientific research as secure argument.…

Calls for the quality of educational research to be monitored more carefully are examined in the context of the most widely used and trusted form of quality screening, namely, that afforded by peer review. The serious limitations of peer review for this purpose, especially in education, are outlined before discussing the place of peer review…

This article offers a philosophical contribution to recent debates about the assessment of quality in educational research. It shows how criticisms of the quality of educational research--pointing to its failure to meet epistemic criteria of rigour and practical criteria of relevance--are an inevitable manifestation of the flawed assumption that…

This article addresses the perennial issue of the criteria by which qualitative research should be evaluated. At the present time, there is a sharp conflict between demands for explicit criteria, for example in order to serve systematic reviewing and evidence-based practice, and arguments on the part of some qualitative researchers that such…