Toward a Social Responsibility Theory for Educational Research (In Lifelong Learning)

Abstract

This article is about educational research (not) mastering the values for decision making and change. The main issue is the yawning gap between theory and practice in educational research, as seen in a professional field such as lifelong learning. At the start of the article a variety of types of research are presented to show the differences of orientation, process, methodology and goal or focus. Next, the issue of the existing gap between theory and practice is approached by contrasting two extremist types of research: traditional empirical-analytical research and the action research paradigm. Workers within these two opposite paradigms are passionate researchers, lecturers or practitioners, but they have different epistemological assumptions and beliefs and, moreover, feel committed to different professional and scientific or academic responsibilities. Following this reasoning, subsequently the need for a social responsibility theory to bridge the yawning gap between theory and practice is discussed thoroughly. Does such a theory transcend the affective separation that exists between researchers from the two extreme paradigms?