Evidence-based Practice in Education (Conducting Educational Research)

Philippa Cordingley is the founder and the Chief Executive of the Centre for the Use of Research and Evidence in Education (CUREE). As adviser to the DfES, the National Union of Teachers, the National College for School Leadership, the GTC and as Chief Professional Adviser on research to the Teacher Training Agency from 1995-2001 she has instigated, designed and developed a range of strategies, policies and support programmes to increase teacher interest in, access to and use of research. She is a Board member of The Education Network (TEN), a member of the National Steering Group for the Networked Learning Communities Initiative and a school governor.

Philip Davies is Director of Policy Evaluation in the Prime Minister’s Strategy Unit, which is part of the Cabinet Office. Previously he was Director of Social Sciences in the Department for Continuing Education at Oxford University and a Fellow of Kellogg College, Oxford. Philip was responsible (with colleagues in the University of Oxford Medical School) for developing the University of Oxford Master’s Programme in Evidence-Based Health Care. Philip is a founder member of the Campbell Collaboration and is on its international steering committee. He is also a Visiting Honorary Fellow of the UK Cochrane Centre.

Michael Eraut is a Professor of Education at the University of Sussex. His research over the last decade has focused on the nature of professional knowledge and competence, the role of tacit knowledge in professional practice, how professionals and managers learn in the workplace and factors affecting learning in professional apprenticeships. His recent research projects have addressed the training of junior doctors, the development of competence and judgement in postgraduate medical education, the vocational training of clinical and biomedical scientists, and how nurses learn to use scientific knowledge. He is Editor in Chief of a new Blackwells journal, Learning in Health and Social Care.

Deborah Gallagher is Professor of Education at the University of Northern Iowa. Her research interests centre on the philosophy of science as it pertains to research, pedagogy, and policy in education and special education. This work focuses on how choices of methodological and conceptual frameworks affect the possibilities of achieving equitable and inclusive schooling for students labelled as having disabilities. Among other recent publications, she is the lead author of a book entitled, Challenging Orthodoxy in Special Education: Dissenting Voices (Love Publishing Company, 2003) with co-authors: Lous Heshusius, Richard Iano, and Thomas Skrtic.

David Gough is Reader in Social Science and Deputy Director of the Social Science Research Unit and its EPPI-Centre, Institute of Education, University of London. Previously he was Senior Research Fellow at the University of Glasgow and Professor of Social Welfare at Japan Women’s University, near Tokyo. His main areas of research interest are the implicit social policy of social interventions for children and families and methods of systematic research synthesis to address all policy, practice and community questions. He is editor of the journal Child Abuse Review.

Martyn Hammersley is Professor of Educational and Social Research at The Open University. Much of his work has been concerned with the methodological issues surrounding social and educational research. He has written several books: (with Paul Atkinson) Ethnography: principl