Peter claims: The current debate on literacy is evidence that it is difficult to tell if current educational theory has improved anything. From my perspective as a university lecturer, it is certain that the standard of mathematics of our first year students has gone down.

The latter point is of the sort of emotive, gut-level (i.e. non-scientific) diatribe we get from Minister Nelson: e.g. "A mother of a child said to me that her son . . ."

On the other hand, the systematic empirical evidence that is quantitatively summarized says: The (publicly available) international comparisons of educational achievement (PISA) tell that Australian children (almost) invariably do well on these tests. And the appendices to the report have enough formulae to keep any budding physicist busy.

Both Minister Nelson and Dr Ridd studiously avoid this sort of educational research information when composing their attacks - adding more heat but no light to the debate.

Audrey, I suspect you enjoyed writing "[I] still found it easy to comprehend if I used my brain a bit. Yes, I had to look up 'post-structural' in the dictionary..."

I had no idea either, so I too took a look.

"Post-structuralism contests the concept of 'man' as developed by enlightenment thought and idealist philosophy. Rather than holding as in the enlightenment view that 'individuals', are sacred, separate and intact, their minds the only true realm of meaning and value, their rights individual and inalienable, their value and nature rooted in a universal and transhistorical essence -- a metaphysical being, in short -- the post-structural view holds that persons are culturally and discursively structured, created in interaction as situated, symbolic beings. The common term for a person so conceived is a 'subject'"

But I'm not too concerned with the precise meaning - indeed, I doubt there is agreement on one - but with the implications of the rest of the project description.

Are we not in debating territory here, rather than in proper research?

An objective is set. "It seeks to discover if, when and how the recognition of contradictory practices driven by conflicting ideologies can contribute to quality teaching".

Then we read "the findings of the study will provide specific directions for teachers, teacher educators and other professionals on how reflective practice informed by post-structural analyses can contribute to a different, more socially aware understanding of teachers' work."

There is a disconnect here.

It is entirely possible to arrive at valid findings without any reference to the objective. Test that assertion by providing a negative response to the "if" part. "We find that the contradictory practices do not in fact contribute to quality teaching". What would be the impact of this discovery on the "specific directions"?

Because the findings adduce a general from a specific, the only possible value of the entire exercise can be in the debate itself. Not that this is necessarily a bad thing, but it wouldn't pass muster under the Trades Description Act. Doubt the physics guys would buy into the process either.

I am a training manager. Today I spent two hours in a meeting discussing the application of Standard 7 of the AQTF/ATMR. I then wrote a report on a training analysis in which the people who prepared the analysis had completely forgotten the concept of Competency Training, which is to link training to the workplace requirement, but instead had added a considerable amount of superfluous training designed, I have no doubt, to bolster a pay case for the group of workers concerned. I wrote reports, I spoke to trainers, I prepared statistics and at the end of the day I reached for whatever digest of educational and training research had reached my in tray. Thirty seconds later, it was back in my in-tray and I returned to more mundane matters to do with managing the training of my organisation—I had no energy or inclination even to try to penetrate the flapdoodle (lovely word thank you Mark Twain) of which the booklet of research seemed to mostly consist.

Why is this so? I try to spare half an hour during lunch to look at Arts and Letters, and always find something of interest. I come from a technology background and technical research can absorb me for hours but is it me ....I suppose it must be, but life is far far too short to spend time on current educational research, maybe if researchers learnt how to use bullet points and could condense their work into a few points using active voice.

By the way the Atom bomb--before the bomb millions dead, World War 1 and World War 2, after the bomb, thousands, yes regrettable, but no repeat of the mass slaughter of the first two world wars. Maybe science should not be so reticent about the bomb

Thanks for all the Interest. Something that strikes me about the general comments that have been made is that nobody has come up with a list of, perhaps, 10 great breakthroughs in Educational Research of the last 100 years. My basic argument is that there has been spectacularly little progress in this time. None of you seem to disagree.

On the subject of problems that I see with first year Maths Science and Engineering students. Yes it is anecdotal. Perhaps one of our educational researchers could pick this up. However, do not think I am seeing the past with rose coloured glasses. We have diluted our first year Maths course twice in the last 10 years and also introduced an even lower level course. Other Universities have done the same.

The PISA survey may be of some comfort to some of you but the TIMMS survey is not. And they both finish at grade 8. There are 4 more years of damage to be inflicted on the kids before I see them. And anyway, why is that Singapore so comprehensively beats us in these surveys?

Cheer
Peter Ridd

I'm wary that Peter is trying to draw this debate into what constitutes 'real' research. Educational research doesn't have the the hard factual laws like physics does - it's much harder to find a conclusive result, so the concept of a side-by-side comparison of "great breakthroughs" between educational research and physics does not sit well. Everyone has different ideas on how education should be done, but educational research tries to bring to the fore the methods that work best, and tries to find the reasons why, using rational approaches.

I'm not an authority on the history of educational research, so I can't comment on when the following came to the fore, but below are some of points of interest in the course that I completed last year. I wont go into the details of what they all mean, any more than I'm going to explain what quantum chromodynamics is. Look them up if your are interested and decide whether they are worthwhile yourselves.

* the role of multiple 'channels' of perception in learning

* learning is an inherently social phenomenon

* analysis of the aplicability of various learning models to different learning situations, such as "transmission" of knowledge (a very much overused one .. just look at the term "lecturer")

* different students learn in different ways - faculties tends to develop a culture of teaching that is modelled on the way that they learnt - this leads to the poor performance of students who need other ways of learning - the educators involved tend to blame the students rather than seeing the limitations of their own technique

* 'alignment' of objectives, learning activities and assessment

* the concept of 'shallow' versus 'deep' learning activities, and how to encourage the 'deep' processes

* the importance of cross-disciplinary learning in today's world

* lots on online learning (and why a lot of it fails!)

* catering for students from different cultures, and how to do it

* lots on what it means to "understand" something

* lots on developmental stages (or lack of) in childen

* etc.

i'm a sucker for these kinds of discussions. seems to me that we're operating on a whole range of different assumptions about what research is and isn't (ie. mine is evidence-based and yours is a polemic), what it should and shouldn't do (ie. mine is about the production of reliable knowledge that adds value whereas yours is waffly and conceptual - read: of questionable utility), and that we agree on what's good about it. cards on the table... i am an educational researcher. in fact, in my job (for good or ill) i work with academics across a whole range of disciplinary areas who make precisely the same case that peter does. we usually disagree but it's always a great convo starter. with colleagues, i am part of that mob in universities that run those pesky graduate certificates in higher education where we encourage academics to think about teaching and learning as a form of scholarship, to reflect on their teaching, and to inquire into students learning. all forms of educational research. i'm always fascinated by the accusation of waffley-ness. it's almost as if the abstract nature of something like physics for instance, is seen as so utterly necessary for its work that it no longer has to defend itself as a waffly enterprise. it simply just exists as physics. but in education, conceptual, or similar work is a no, no... it ought to be clear, direct, concise... focused on the outcomes not that kind of high falutin, methodological sort of theorising. now, i'm not arguing against clarity but what i am saying is that like science, and like any other disciplinary area, the nature of research is contested. kuhn's work shows us this as did bits of latour. educational research in particular, is such a multifaceted phenomenon with a whole range of traditions running through it. i suppose i get abit worried when we try to make it be about one thing when its strength i think, is precisely it's open nature... but then again... that could just be the latent post-structuralist in me.

appreciate the provocation, taiz