Issues Facing Educational Researchers in the United States

In an article written by David F. Labaree published with the URL www.stanford.edu/.../Ed_Researchers_Living_with_Lesser.pdf he argued that educational knowledge have advantages and disadvantages for educational researchers because they both constrain and enable the work of the latter. Educational knowledge has the following characteristics:

• soft
• applied
• provides use value

This results to knowledge production in education which is organised in a manner that is structurally egalitarian and also substantively divergent. This results to some negative consequences such as when educational researchers are unable to speak with authority about their field of study. They also feel the pressure to copy forms of intellectual practice which are considered unproductive. There are also some positive consequences such as when educational researchers have the possibility to speak to a wider lay audience and participate in a mode of scholarly production which is for the most part open and not too regulated.

It is important to remember that the knowledge produced by educational researchers for schools is different to other forms of knowledge which are generated in a university setting. Education schools are often seen to be easy picking for criticism, especially in the United States because of several of its characteristics such as the following which does not make it easy for its practitioners and supporters to defend to its naysayers:

• It has origins (the 19th-century normal school) which are considered to be lowly
• The social standing of its primary clients such as women and working class are likewise considered to be inferior
• It prepares students to professions which are not considered to be for the elite or extremely intellectual or skilled
• Its curriculum and academic standards are traditionally viewed as weak
• Its faculty and students are generally seen as less talented or able than their other counterparts elsewhere