This article draws on the author's experience as Director of the Teaching and Learning Research Programme (TLRP), the UK's largest coordinated educational research initiative, to review some recent developments in the field and, in particular, some major contemporary challenges. In response to critiques of educational research of the late 1990s,…

Work with 17 teachers conducting cooperative research under the British government's Best Practice Research model identified underlying tensions: conflict between the process of becoming a researcher and focus on findings; relationship between practice and research; the issue of what counts as learning; and conflicting intentions (government focus…

The mythical purity of research and scientific method leads to limited practice. Teacher researchers should question the universality of findings and recognize their position as researchers and as classed, raced, and gendered subjects, moving the focus away from policymakers and toward a wider constituency. (SK)