This article argues that the "quality" debate in education research is not so much about quality as about creating the conditions in which research and knowledge production in the field of education can be managed and steered. The criticisms of research in education have destabilised the field and promoted its closer dependence on and…

As with education as a whole, as a field of study and research, educational leadership and management has, notably in the UK but also elsewhere, experienced a period of critical and self-critical examination. The accusations claim much of it is second rate, ideologically orientated, methodologically inadequate, small-scale, non-cumulative, poorly…