The changing and complex entanglements of research and policy making in education: issues for environmental and sustainability education

Abstract

This paper focuses on the complex, entangled relationships between research and policy and suggests this is a very important topic in the contemporary era of so-called, ‘evidence-based’ or ‘research-based’ policy in education. The paper argues that we can only ever have ‘evidence-informed’ and ‘research-informed’ policy because all policy is an admixture of facts (research), politics (discourses, values, ideologies) and professional knowledges, a position readily apparent in respect of ESE and broader climate policy. The paper also argues that post-truth contexts and the politics of affect provide a significant backdrop to research/policy relationships with specific salience in respect of environmental and sustainability education (ESE) research and policy, given the conflictual politics surrounding this domain. The distinction between research for and of policy is used analytically in the paper. While research for policy, often conducted by private consultancies, might have a more direct and immediate impact on policy, it is suggested that research of policy, often conducted by academic researchers, and indeed research of a critical kind, potentially can have long-term impact, affecting the assumptive worlds of policy makers, often in unacknowledged ways. Globalization has resulted in the global circulation of policy ideas and thus research can affect policy at varying levels in contemporary policy processes of the restructured/rescaled state. Some consideration is also given to the rise of big data and policy as numbers. The paper discusses implications of such developments for considerations of research/policy relationships, particularly in relation to ESE. The paper concludes by suggesting the current climate emergency demands activist research and researchers in the ESE domain and also activist teachers and students.

Keywords:

• Globalisation
• policy-making
• policy
• education for sustainable development
• research

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No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Correction Statement

This article has been republished with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Notes

1 Recently, I have been part of a team that conducted research for a government in Australia, which included both quantitative survey data and qualitative data from interviews and focus groups. In an oral presentation to the department senior leaders about the research ‘findings’, a senior policy maker stressed they really only wanted to know what the hard data said (that is, the survey) and were not so interested in what we saw as the very informative qualitative data.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Bob Lingard

Bob Lingard is a Professorial Fellow in the Institute for Learning Sciences & Teacher Education at Australian Catholic University. He has published widely in the sociology of education and policy sociology in education. His most recent co-authored book is Globalizing Educational Accountabilities (Routedge, 2016).