Scaling Down: A Modest Proposal for Practice-based Policy Research in Teaching

Authors

  • Frederick Erickson Inaugural George F. Kneller Professor of Anthropology of Education, Emeritus University of California, Los Angeles

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.14507/epaa.v22n9.2014

Keywords:

educational policy, educational research, school reform, qualitative methods, Science Wars

Abstract

This proposal addresses the assumptions underlying the “Science Wars” about the purpose of educational research. The author proposes a more modest “Lake Woebegon” approach to school reform that supports long-term professional education, a shift away from “Best Practices” to “Pretty Good Practices,” low fidelity implementation of interventions, and the importance of local context. Action research is presented as one possible qualitative approach for conducting “practice-based research.”

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Author Biography

Frederick Erickson, Inaugural George F. Kneller Professor of Anthropology of Education, Emeritus University of California, Los Angeles

Frederick Erickson is inaugural George F. Kneller Professor of Anthropology of Education, Emeritus at the University of California, Los Angeles. He has written extensively on qualitative research methods and on sociolinguistic study of face-to-face interaction, with special attention to the musicality of speech. In 2005 his recent book, Talk and social theory: Ecologies of listening and speaking in every-day life (Polity Press, 2004), won an Outstanding Book Award from the American Educational Research Association.

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Published

2014-02-15

How to Cite

Erickson, F. (2014). Scaling Down: A Modest Proposal for Practice-based Policy Research in Teaching. Education Policy Analysis Archives, 22, 9. https://doi.org/10.14507/epaa.v22n9.2014

Issue

Vol. 22 (2014)

Section

Qualitative Inquiry