What Factors Affect the Adoption of Research within Educational Policy Making? How Might a Better Understanding of These Factors Improve Research Adoption and Aid the Development of Policy?

This study addresses two questions: “What factors affect the adoption of research within educational policy making?” and “How might a better understanding of these factors improve research adoption and aid the development of policy?” In investigating the concept of research adoption, which I regard as vital to the successful creation of ‘evidence-informed’ policies/policy instruments, it is hoped that the study’s conclusions will assist researchers seeking to influence policy development, whilst also aiding policy-makers who wish to inform their policies with evidence. I begin the study by critically engaging with the concept of evidence-informed policy making. I then shift my focus to the theoretical field of knowledge transfer/exchange. The assumptions that subsequently emerge from this engagement and which form the conceptual basis of the thesis are that: evidence-informed policy is dependent on the prior adoption of research by policy-makers, and; that adoption itself depends both upon effective communication by research ‘suppliers’ and effective reception on the part of research audiences. Building on these assumptions, I then establish the individual factors that are considered to be vital in facilitating the research adoption process. These adoption factors are afforded further explanatory power through their combination with the theoretical framework I have employed for the thesis; Social Activity Method (SAM). In brief, SAM argues that the social world comprises people