Kudos
Kunnskapsdokumenter i offentlig sektor

Kartlegging

Rigour and relevance in Educational Research Report from the March Seminar 2010

The quality of the educational system and infrastructure is central to every nation’s economy, development, social integration and well-being. The quality of education depends and builds on the quality, rigour and relevance of available educational research. It is therefore of critical importance to secure and raise the standards for conducting research in order to improve education. In Norway, the Research Council holds a critical position when it comes to organising and funding educational research. The Research Council has been funding educational research programmes since the mid-1990s, starting with the research programme Competence, Learning Processes and Value Creation in Worklife (KUV), which started in 1996, and the evaluation of the 1997 curriculum reform, Evaluating Reform 97. However, all research initiatives within the educational sciences have lacked a long-term perspective, sufficient volume for funding and infrastructures that paid attention to processes of synthesising and accumulating research within the education sector. It was therefore a huge step forward when the Ministry of Education together with the Research Council of Norway launched the new research programme Educational Research towards 2020 – UTDANNING2020. The UTDANNING2020 research programme is designed to address and challenge scientific merits, multidisciplinarity, rigour and relevance in educational research.