SCRE is in the business of encouraging practitioners, especially teachers and educational psychologists, to undertake this kind of activity. The purpose of this Spotlight is to discuss the nature of research and to identify some of the questions which it is important to address at the planning stage and to return to throughout the life of any study. Let me make it clear from the outset that good research is demanding and cannot effectively be completed on the odd wet Saturday afternoon. But it is, at the same time, rewarding and invigorating in the added understanding it brings to educational matters. It is worth the effort.
Research extends knowledge.
In this context we are talking about knowledge in a form which allows it to be usefully shared. Sometimes that form may be one of explanations of, say, children's learning difficulties, the effectiveness of schools, the relationships between teaching methods and pupils' achievements, anxiety levels or unruly behaviour, the efficiency of different management strategies or a host of other phenomena on which research can focus. Alternatively, it may have a more developmental or evaluative aspect where improvement in some aspect of policy, practice or organisation is sought. We are not talking here then about mere observation and speculation, nor about polemic no matter how fluent and convincing. And research goes beyond description to include disciplined enquiry which generates interpretations, inferences and conclusions based on evidence and logical argument.