Partisanship in educational research

In his empirical study of educational research, James Tooley claims to have uncovered 'partisanship' in the 'focus content and argument of educational research'. The purpose of this paper is to suggest that Tooley's study is simply one more manifestation of the failure of many educational researchers to take account of the extensive theoretical and methodological developments that have occurred over the last four decades in the political and social sciences. It is suggested that a debate about partisanship and educational research which took these developments seriously would not be a narrow debate in which researchers with right wing affinities try to score political points against researchers of the left. Instead, it would be a more intellectually rigorous and theoretically informed debate about the complex relationship between educational values and political beliefs on the one hand and research methodologies and practices on the other.