What’s most important is not always what’s most visible and valued. The case of educational research

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to establish the importance of research in such a fundamental area for people and society as is education. It is virtually impossible to think about the development of the social, cultural, political, ethical, scientific, technological, economic and artistic knowledge that shape civilizations without more or less elaborate systems that guarantee both the preservation and transmission of available knowledge and the opportunity for each and every individual to access it. This last need is becoming increasingly urgent in a world where the unstoppable proliferation of digital technologies increases both the volume of information and the difficulty of finding meaning in the mass of received information. Next we make a brief synthesis of the history of educational research in our context and of the constant lack of resources for this essential activity and then we present some research that has helped to deal with the complexity of educational phenomena. Lastly, the difficulty of ensuring that the knowledge generated by educational research is taken into consideration by the people responsible for educational policies and by teachers (including teacher trainers’) in order to improve educational practice is emphasized.

Keywords: Research, education, information technologies, educational policy, teachers, practice.