Online Distance Education: Towards a Research Agenda

Online Distance Education: Towards a Research Agenda offers a systematic overview of the major issues, trends, and areas of priority in online distance education research. In each chapter, an international expert or team of experts provides an overview of one timely issue in online distance education, summarizing major research on the topic, discussing theoretical insights that guide the research, posing questions and directions for future research, and discussing the implications for distance education practice as a whole. Intended as a primary reference and guide for distance educators, researchers, and policymakers, Online Distance Education addresses aspects of distance education practice that have often been marginalized, including issues of cost and economics, concerns surrounding social justice, cultural bias, the need for faculty professional development, and the management and growth of learner communities. At once soundly empirical and thoughtfully reflective, yet also forward-looking and open to new approaches to online and distance teaching, this text is a solid resource for researchers in a rapidly expanding discipline.

Knowledge-Production Processes in Practice Research - Outcomes and Critical Elements

The welfare sector has seen considerable changes in its operational context. Welfare services respond to an increasing number of challenges as citizens are confronted with life’s uncertainties and a variety of complex situations. At the same time the service-delivery system is facing problems of co-operation and the development of staff competence, as well as demands to improve service effectiveness and outcomes. In order to ensure optimal user outcomes in this complex, evolving environment it is necessary to enhance professional knowledge and skills, and to increase efforts to develop the services. Changes are also evident in the new emergent knowledge-production models. There has been a shift from knowledge acquisition and transmission to its construction and production. New actors have stepped in and the roles of researchers are subject to critical discussion. Research outcomes, in other words the usefulness of research with respect to practice development, is a topical agenda item. Research is needed, but if it is to be useful it needs to be not only credible but also useful in action. What do we know about different research processes in practice? What conceptions, approaches, methods and actor roles are embedded? What is the effect on practice? How does ‘here and now’ practice challenge research methods? This article is based on the research processes conducted in the institutes of practice research in social work in Finland. It analyses the different approaches applied by elucidating the theoretical standpoints and the critical elements embedded in them, and reflects on the outcomes in and for practice. It highlights the level of change and progression in practice research, arguing for diverse practice research models with a solid theoretical grounding, rigorous research processes, and a supportive infrastructure.

Practice Literate Research: Turning the Tables

Researchers complain how difficult it is to get practitioners and policymakers to use research. In contrast, this paper looks at the issues from the perspective of practice, and argues that it is the researcher’s job to become more practice-literate, so that research begins with practice concerns and develops practice-based solutions. The paper explores the relationship between research and practice and suggests that research has insufficiently engaged with the nature of practice and practice knowledge. Using the Salisbury Statement on practice research (Salisbury Statement 2010) the paper offers a definition of practice research and analyses what would be required for an agenda for practice research. Finally the paper proposes five functions for practice research.