Picture child's feet next to pens, pencils and paper

Open Access research that is helping to improve educational outcomes for children

Strathprints makes available scholarly Open Access content by researchers in the School of Education, including those researching educational and social practices in curricular subjects. Research in this area seeks to understand the complex influences that increase curricula capacity and engagement by studying how curriculum practices relate to cultural, intellectual and social practices in and out of schools and nurseries.

Research at the School of Education also spans a number of other areas, including inclusive pedagogy, philosophy of education, health and wellbeing within health-related aspects of education (e.g. physical education and sport pedagogy, autism and technology, counselling education, and pedagogies for mental and emotional health), languages education, and other areas.

Explore Open Access education research. Or explore all of Strathclyde's Open Access research...

Strathprints

Ethics, education policy and research : the phonics question reconsidered

Ellis, Sue and Moss, Gemma (2014) Ethics, education policy and research : the phonics question reconsidered. British Educational Research Journal, 40 (2). 241–260. ISSN 0141-1926

[img] Microsoft Word
Ethics_Ed_policy_and_research_final.docx
Preprint
Download (84kB)

Abstract

This paper argues that direct control of the early years literacy curriculum recently exercised by politicians in England has made the boundaries between research, policy and practice increasingly fragile. It describes how policy came to focus most effort on the use of synthetic phonics programmes in the early years. It examines why the Clackmannanshire phonics intervention became the study most frequently cited to justify government policy and suggests a phonics research agenda that could more usefully inform teaching. It argues that, whilst academics cannot control how their research is eventually used by policymakers, learned societies can strengthen their ethics policies to set out clearer ground-rules for academic researchers working across knowledge domains and with policymakers. A stronger framework to guide the ethical interpretation of research evidence in complex education investigations would allow more meaningful conversations to take place within and across research communities, and with research users. The paper suggests some features for such a framework.

Item type: Article
ID code: 42995
Keywords: phonics , research ethics, literacy policy, early reading, knowledge mobilization, evidence-based education , Theory and practice of education, Education
Subjects: Education > Theory and practice of education
Department: Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences (HaSS) > School of Education > Education
Depositing user: Pure Administrator
Date deposited: 26 Feb 2013 12:47
Last modified: 26 Nov 2018 01:12
Related URLs:
URI: https://strathprints.strath.ac.uk/id/eprint/42995
Export data:
CORE (COnnecting REpositories)