Education Enriched bij Research
Future-Oriented Advice on Educational Research in Flanders
In 2007, the Flemish Education Council formulated the framework recommendation on Educational Research. Since then, the council has issued several additional recommendations on educational research. These include annual recommendations on thematic priorities for the Flemish Research Program for Policy-Supporting Scientific Research on Education (OBPWO), an initiative-based recommendation with knowledge questions from the education sector, and general recommendations on practice-oriented educational research and the Policy-Oriented Education Research Support Center (SONO). These recommendations helped form the basis for this advice.
This updated framework recommendation responds to shifts in the educational research landscape, the growing emphasis on using research evidence in policy and practice, developments related to educational quality, and a changing perspective on the interaction between research and educational practice, among other factors.
The recommendation outlines Vlor’s perspective on educational research and its interaction with educational policy and practice through the following future visions:
- Education continues to evolve into an evidence-informed system, with a positive impact on the overall quality of education.
- Education has easy access to a rich array of insights from scientific research that meets all quality criteria, reflecting a diversity of perspectives, paradigms, and methodologies.
- Teachers and school teams optimally utilize research insights as a source of information to deliver high-quality education, with their professional expertise serving as the foundation for an equal dialogue with (new) research findings.
- Teachers and school teams, intermediaries, and researchers together form a dynamic ecosystem, fostering exchange on various aspects of research—knowledge questions, practical involvement, valorization, and implementation.
- Policy-preparatory and policy-evaluative research is better integrated into the policy cycle, with its insights and recommendations systematically leading to discussions between researchers, policymakers, and other educational stakeholders.
- Researchers explicitly state their perspective on education, conduct their research independently, and engage in dialogue with other researchers and users to contribute to a broad knowledge base for education.
- The Flemish Government sets the research agenda for the studies it funds but ensures that calls for research leave sufficient room for researchers to define their focus, without political influence over the research itself or its recommendations.
- There is greater transparency regarding the funding of educational research, and research outputs funded by public resources are freely accessible to the education sector.
- The Flemish Education Council monitors the coherence among partners in the interest of a sustainable and coherent educational landscape.