Research and Practice in Education - Still too far?!?
The ‘bridge too far’ that Bruer preconized more than two decades ago (1997) still finds echo in today’s discussions. Is it applicable? Haven’t we crossed the bridge of responsible transdisciplinarity and translational research to application yet? Recent publications seem to contradict this. Let’s then examine why. Daniel (2012) states that “If we are truly interested in pursuing educational implications, it is important to understand that what works in a controlled context may have a very different effect when applied without the support inherent to high-quality curricular design” (2012, p. 252). By controlled context here, the intended meaning is the lab, where variables are carefully controlled to measure intended (or not) outcomes. To all intents and purposes, the idea that Daniel gives is that there should be controlled and well aligned experiments in the lab before they are translated into educational guidelines to improve learning in real classrooms. So far, so good