Educational Research for Policy and Practice 1: 16, 2002.

2002 Kluwer Academic Publishers. Printed in the Netherlands.

Editorial: Educational Research for Policy and Practice

Colin Power
Editor-in-chief, ERPP

The Asia-Pacific region is home to over 60% of the worlds population. Like other
regions, it faces major educational challenges as countries in the region seek to prepare their citizens for life in a global society undergoing dramatic social, political
and economic change. The region is characterised by enormous socio-economic,
cultural, political and developmental diversity: it includes nations that are very
small and extremely large, very old and very new, and very rich and very poor.
Yet despite the differences, there is a shared belief throughout the region in the
value of education and learning in improving future opportunities for individuals
and nations. There is also a growing belief in the importance of educational research and the role it can play in helping to improve the quality, effectiveness and
relevance of education for learners.
For many years, UNESCO, through its regional programmes, has sought to
encourage the development and use of educational research and innovation geared
to achieving national development goals. For example, APEID (the Asia and the
Pacific Programme of Educational Innovation and Development) has developed a
network of over 200 associated centres from most countries in the Asia-Pacific
region. The APEID Programme is jointly designed, implemented and evaluated by
the UNESCOs Asia-Pacific Member States, and has focussed promoting regional
co-operation in many areas such as the reform of education; education policy,
management and planning; science and technology education; moral education and
education for peace, human rights and international understanding.
The concept of an Asia-Pacific Educational Research Association (APERA) had
its origins in an APEID meeting held in Melbourne at the Australian Council for
Educational Research (ACER) in 1995. Representing the 14 countries participating
were the Directors of the key institutes of educational research. They identified
research and development priorities for the region and discussed ways of collaborating to address these priorities. During subsequent meetings of the directors
of key national educational research institutes and at the Sixth UNESCO-APEID
International Conference on Education (Bangkok, December 1999), the concept
of a network of institutes was expanded to encompass the establishment of a regional association for educational research and a journal of educational research
to improve policy and practice. At the same time, collaboration among national
educational research associations in the region was beginning to take place through

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a series of the joint annual meetings involving the Australian, Hong Kong, New
Zealand and Singapore Educational Research Associations.
Participants representing the educational institutes from 14 countries and UNESCO met at the Regional Seminar on Educational Research for Policy and Practice held in October 2000 at the National Institute for Educational Research (NIER)
of Japan and agreed to work towards the establishment of APERA. Its mission was
to support and encourage educational research in the Asia-Pacific region and to
build stronger links between research, policy and practice. The new Association
set out to encourage a broad membership by research institutions, national associations and individuals. Its basic objectives are to: (a) support educational research
and researchers in the Asia-Pacific region; (b) promote greater communication between researchers and policy makers, administrators and educational practioners,
in particular by establishing a regional journal (Educational Research for Policy
and Practice) to be published by Kluwer Academic Publishers; (c) disseminating
educational research findings; and (d) supporting the development of research expertise. The Association and its Journal were formally launched at the seventh
UNESCO-APEID International Conference on Education (Bangkok, December
2000).
APERA is deeply committed both to the enrichment and liberation of human
minds through education and to the pursuit of knowledge through open inquiry and
debate. There are several reasons why its founders are seeking improved collaboration among educational researchers and stronger links between research policy and
practice in the Asia-Pacific region. Firstly, whereas there are links among major
educational research institutions and associations in the larger and more developed
countries in the region, educational research is not well developed in the majority
of Asian-Pacific countries. Indeed, in some countries in the region, it is a new field.
As the article by Khaparde illustrates, most educational researchers working in
universities in developing countries do so in isolation from others in their field and
from policy makers, and often unaware of similar work being carried out elsewhere.
Until recently, most were trained in the west and their approach to research and
the teaching of research methodologies has mirrored that training. Often, when
researchers do look beyond their borders, it is to Europe or the United States,
rather than to research being carried out in contexts similar to their own. Language
barriers and the lack of opportunities to meet, to consider research issues, to share
expertise and to disseminate their findings through a regional educational research
journal have worked against the development of a substantial and systematic AsianPacific knowledge base in education. ERPP, as the official journal of APERA, seeks
to create opportunities for educational research workers throughout the region to
share their findings and to engage in a dialogue on substantive educational and
research issues.
It should also be stressed that APERA sees educational research are as a multidisciplinary field, one in which systematic inquiries into issues in educational policy and practice are undertaken using a variety of scholarly methods, both qualita-

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tive and quantitative. Indeed, as Asghar Iran-Nejad and Pearson (1999) argue we
may need to rethink our assumptions about research and professional knowledge,
and one might add, we may need to develop a very different view of the relationships between educational research, policy and practice. Certainly, existing conceptions of the relationship between professional knowledge and practice are in the
process of being redefined, namely those of knowledge-for-practice (the traditional
view created by western university researchers of a solid body of research-based
knowledge about educational policy and practice); knowledge-in-practice, the accumulated wisdom, assumptions and beliefs about education which frame educational policy, reform and practice in most Asian-Pacific countries; and knowledgeof-practice, the understanding of practice acquired by educators and ethnographic
researchers through participation in action research. The articles in this volume
reflect the differences in the extent to which these conceptions have facilitated or
inhibited the forging of closer links between research on the one hand and policy
and practice on the other.
Embedded in every approach to educational research, practice and reform are
intuitively entrenched assumptions about what counts as knowledge, sound policy
and good practice, assumptions which may have more or less validity in different
cultural and temporal contexts. It is important then that we understand how our
views, policies, practices and research/scholarly traditions have developed, and
debate how the cultures of research, reform, policy and practice in our region need
to change if we are to confront the challenges facing our region in the 21st century.
In this, the ERPP seeks to encourage educational researchers from a variety of
fields, and particularly young researchers from developing countries in the region,
to share findings with important implications for policy and practice. For example,
in this issue, Guijuan Gaos research raises issues about the type of legislation and
regulations needed for the conduct of examinations not only in China but which
are of concern to other developing countries. We would also like to invite policy
makers and educational practioners to comment on issues raised by contributors.
Secondly, educational change is occurring very rapidly in most Asia-Pacific
countries, changes which reflect both the challenges common to all education systems worldwide, and the enormous diversity of needs, cultures and traditions of the
region. With the collapse of the Soviet Union, many new countries have emerged
in Central Asia, countries in which education has a key role to play in building
a new nation. In countries like Afghanistan and East Timor, an entire educational
system and its infrastructure must be rebuilt. Other nations face serious internal
conflicts and all of our education systems need to be reformed in ways which
contribute to improvements in all four pillars of learning stressed by the Delors Report (UNESCO, 1996), especially that of learning to live together. The education
systems of many countries in the region face formidable problems in meeting the
basic education needs of all, coping with lingering problems created by reforms
stemming from the simplistic application of market economics to education and
the Asian economic crisis.

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All nations in the region and their education systems must face the challenge
of globalisation, of that multi-faceted set of processes which mean that shrinking
space, shrinking time and disappearing borders are linking peoples lives more
deeply, more intensely and more immediately than ever before (UNDP, 1999). In
the knowledge age, governments in the region as elsewhere are beginning to see
education as the engine of economic development. Moreover, with globalisation,
educational systems must respond to issues stemming from the internationalisation of education and the emergence of new systems for the delivery of education
created by new technologies, as well national priorities and local realities. Given
the challenges, the education systems of Asian-Pacific countries are undergoing
continuous change and most governments have set in motion a series of major
educational reforms. However, changes too often are made mainly for political or
ideological reasons, and ignore or fail to seek, dependable research-based evidence.
Given that education is a major area of public expenditure and the importance of
the roles demanded of it in the 21st century, it seems reasonable to expect that the
allocation of resources and reforms of the education system would be informed
by research and subjected to systematic evaluation. At the NIER Seminar in 2000,
participants gave papers which set out to analyse the role played by research in
the development and evaluation of recent educational reforms in the countries
represented. Four of the articles (dealing with educational reforms and research
in Hong Kong, India, New Zealand and Sri Lanka) are based on papers presented
at the NIER regional seminar.
Thirdly, as these articles aptly show, on the one hand, educational research
must be better targeted on pressing issues of policy and practice, and on the other,
educational reforms are more likely to achieve their objectives if they are based
on relevant research and if research and evaluation studies are an integral part
of the reform process. While President of the Australian Educational Research
Association, I (Power, 1981) argued that some of the imbalances in educational research have been the product of the artificial separation of theory from practice,
and basic from applied research, and that one cannot separate the two main
aims of research (the pursuit of knowledge and the improvement of policy and
practice) as if they were poles which pull against each other. Educational research
must begin with, and can never separate itself from the problems of educational
policy and practice. Evaluation, policy and action research are never devoid of
theory, however unsystematic and submerged it may be. I also argued that the most
defensible answer to questions about the contribution of educational research to
policy and practice comes from research analyses of the relationships among them.
These analyses suggest that the contribution of educational research has tended
to been indirect rather than direct, complex rather than simple, problematic rather
than predictable, and delayed rather than immediate but nonetheless, important.
The analyses reveal that research in education typically is thrown into and filtered
through the marketplace of ideas from outside and the unique cultural traditions
which shape national educational policies and practice in this very diverse region.

EDUCATIONAL RESEARCH FOR POLICY AND PRACTICE

Increasingly international studies of progress towards education for all and of

educational achievement as well as sector studies undertaken for development banks
and agencies are influencing national education policy agendas, raising consciousness of development and quality issues which might otherwise be overlooked.
While national agendas are increasingly being shaped by common global pressures
and the internationalisation of education (including research and statistics), as the
articles presented here reveal, the reform of educational policy and practice in most
nations in the region has mainly been determined by the work of national reform
commissions.
As the articles by YC Cheng Baker show, reforms and policy making are more
likely to be effective when supported by substantial research findings and pilot
testing, but unfortunately even in the more developed parts of the Asia-Pacific
region this has rarely been the case. Throughout the region there has been a lack
of policy-related research and of a tradition of using research findings in policymaking. YC Chengs call for more research on, and greater attention by would-be
reformers to school processes and school-based needs, makes good sense. Baker
points out that much of the educational research in the past decade has been small
scale and short term and that while this has served much of the immediate policy
agenda of reform commissions and policy makers, it has provided only fragmentary
evidence to inform loner term goals such as improving student performance.
The articles presented in this volume reflect differences in the nature of the
policy agendas and educational research infrastructures in the Asia-Pacific region.
In countries like Australia, China, India, Japan, Korea and New Zealand, national
educational research institutes like ACER, NCEDR, NCERT, NIER, KEDI and
NZCER have long played a significant role not only in undertaking major national
and international studies, but also in creating opportunities for a dialogue with
policy makers. In other parts of the region, these roles are more or less assumed by
Research and Development Offices in the Ministry of Education (e.g., Indonesia,
Vietnam) or Institutes of Education (e.g., Hong Kong, Singapore) . This volume
has focussed particularly on the role played by such national institutes in facilitating in policy making and the evaluation of educational reforms (particularly in
secondary education). The NIER Seminar also revealed the extent to which recent
reform commissions in countries like Thailand and Sri Lanka have made use of,
or supported, research which has been undertaken in order to inform (or at times,
legitimate) their recommendations. Individual studies can rarely be expected to
provide definitive answers to the complex, value-laid issues with which reform
commissions must deal. YC Cheng makes a compelling case, based on the Hong
Kong experience, for four frames of research which support the whole life cycle
of educational policy including the formulation of policy objectives, formulation,
implementation and outcomes.
In some respects, education policy makers, teachers and researchers inhabit
different educational sub-cultures: they occupy different positions of power within
the system, within different time-frames, but hopefully they share the same basic

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objectives that of improving educational policy and practice. There is a need for
greater dialogue and understanding among them. As Baker points out, the emphasis
by policy makers in the 1990s on market solutions has made it difficult to establish clear regional and national research priorities, and thus developing a tradition
of research-based policy and practice will take time. Her call for the importance
of a continuing conversation between teachers, researchers, politicians and the
community is timely, especially if that dialogue reflects on policy and practice in
the light of the best evidence available. Certainly, this Journal is dedicated to the
objective of ensuring that educational researchers give more consideration to the
practical implications of their research, and that policy makers, teachers and researchers share their concerns, experience and results. In a period of rapid change,
such collaboration is needed to enhance the take-up and impact of research and the
ways in which research is perceived, conducted, supported and used to improve the
quality of teaching and learning in the Asia-Pacific region.

References
Asghar Iran-Nejad & Pearson, P. D. (1999). Welcome to the threshold of a new science of education.
Review of Research in Education, Vol. 24. Washington DC: American Educational Research
Association.
Power, C. N. (1981). The contribution of research to educational policy and practice. Australian
Educational Researcher, 8(1), 519.
UNDP (1999). World Development Report. New York: UNDP.
UNESCO (1996). Learning: the Treasure Within. Report of the International Commssion on
Education for the 21st Century (Chair: J. Delors). Paris: UNESCO Publishing.