Learning Conversations

Why do we do research at all? It's to get a best-fit picture of the world and how things work, so that we can persuade other people to take advantage of new ways of working, that have been shown to work for other people.

What research doesn't show is that these new ways will definitely work for everyone. But that's the way it's often used. Take the Plowden report for example (See: http://www.infed.org/schooling/plowden_report.htm ). It offered a well-researched approach to schooling, showing where that approach had worked. Yet, there are many examples of schools that tried the approach piecemeal, without the full understanding of what was involved, and it failed. I think the Rose report on children's reading is going to be very similar. I also think the same will be for new approaches to learning that use ICT. There will be the places that have a good understanding of what it means, and its implications, where positive results (whatever that might mean!) are attained. But those new approaches will still fail in many places that don't have that full understanding.

So, I think I'm saying we still need rigorous research, but it's alright to be done on a small scale, as long as those small-scale results are not used to make large-scale policy changes. Instead used to support more small-scale, organic changes via a community of practice.

This is where I've been struggling I think. Sociological research has, in my mind, been a poor relation to scientific research, where, using the same methodology you should be able to replicate the results, which can then be analysed numerically and graphically. I've not been able to see how you can even attempt to do that when you're dealing with people. I'm still not sure, but at least I know now what questions I need to ask.