Bridging the gap between educational research and educational practice: The need for critical distance

Abstract

The contributions to this special issue explore a range of different aspects of the relationship between research and practice in education. All start from the assumption that there is a gap between research and practice. Some authors take a descriptive approach in that they try to outline the nature of and reasons for the alleged gap between research and practice. Educational research is, after all, never simply research on education but always in some sense also research for education. This, in sum, reveals that it is as important to try to bridge gaps between research and practice as it is to keep a critical distance between the two, both from the side of educational research and from the side of educational practice