Who is conducting educational research in Australia and how can their work be supported?
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Who is conducting educational research in Australia and how can their work be supported? Dawn Bennett • Erica Smith • Sue Bennett • Philip Chan • Janette Bobis • Neil Harrison • Terri Seddon • Sue Shore
The Australian Association for Research in Education, Inc. 2013
Abstract Educational research has long been the subject of lively and agitated debate, not least because of its diversity. Ranging in scope from academic development and broad-scale policy research through to student engagement and discipline-specific research, it includes methods of traditional academic inquiry and investigations and also less traditional modes of research. However, the topography of Australian educational research and the characteristics of the people who undertake this complex body of work are currently unclear. This paper explores some of the complexities of the Australian research community, drawing on the findings of a national online survey of academics who identified as researching in the field of education from within and outside education schools and faculties. The survey attracted 504 responses from 38 of Australia’s 39 universities, and just over two-thirds of respondents were located in a school or faculty of education. We draw D. Bennett (&) Curtin University, Perth, WA, Australia e-mail: [email protected] E. Smith University of Ballarat, Ballarat, VIC, Australia S. Bennett University of Wollongong, Wollongong, NSW, Australia P. Chan T. Seddon Monash University, Melbourne, VIC, Australia J. Bobis University of Sydney, Sydney, NSW, Australia N. Harrison Macquarie University, Sydney, NSW, Australia S. Shore Charles Darwin University, Darwin, NT, Australia
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on the results to answer the questions of who is undertaking educational research and who how they might be supported. We utilise a conceptual model that ‘segments’ the educational research workforce represented by the survey respondents, and we conclude by indicating strategies that might be utilised to address research barriers indicated by educational researchers. Keywords
Educational research Academic workforce Higher education
Introduction The survey reported here was one of two data collection strategies employed to enhance our understanding of the Australian educational research workforce, which has long been complicated (and enhanced) by the addition, to those within the main discipline of education, of researchers from outside the discipline. The two data collection strategies were secondary analysis of data from the 2010 and 2012 iterations of the Excellence in Research Australia (ERA) research assessment exercise; and an online survey of academic researchers in education. This research formed part of a larger project (Seddon et al. 2012) which, with sponsorship from the Australian Association for Research in Education and the Australian Council of Deans of Education, aimed to help develop research capacity in the field of education. The larger project was prompted by the ERA 2010 results, which suggested that educationa
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