Knowledge and Epistemology in Scholarship, Practice and Policy: Research-as-Science and Research-as-Project

Abstract

Rediscovering the science of research in such quintessentially ‘applied’ domains as education and social work is an ongoing project. Researchers use, adapt, and extend the research procedures of the social and behavioural sciences to raise and answer questions of significance to their fellow researchers; but educators and social workers also face challenges that are so insistent and urgent that providing reliable evidence and actionable knowledge has broader social meaning. Many researchers in education and social work had their professional beginnings in practice and policy settings, so they know how consequential timely, usable research-informed knowledge can be, regardless of how clearly they can nominate the frameworks that might provide such knowledge.