Abstract

Values unavoidably enter into the conduct of research and the purposes of research. Whose interests have been served by research? Who have been involved as practitioners of research and as subjects of research and who has not? Should educational research be explicitly committed to promoting equality and inclusion? Does this require research to be more aware of the cultural and global contexts of research questions, and what would it mean for research to be more explicitly re-contextualized? What ethical challenges does the conduct of research encounter? Do comparative research rankings impose ethical and social justice constraints? These general issues are then addressed more particularly concerning research funding. Most educational research increasingly requires institutional and financial support. Does funding shape the content of research, and even what counts as research? Does funding shift the efforts of researchers from pure or basic research to more applied research? Does funding encourage the development of large research teams, to the detriment of individual scholars? Who owns the content, results, and data of publicly funded research? Do scholars solicit funding to support research projects, or generate research projects to attract funding? Thus these commonplaces are explored both philosophically and historically, examining the changing sources, patterns, and effects of educational research funding over time.