Editorial Research recognition

Abstract

Only partly tongue in cheek, I suggested in ALT-N (number 18, July 1997) that we should consider mounting a Campaign for the Acknowledgement of Research into Educational Technology (CARET). I was astonished by the large number of responses in my mailbox, not one of them dissenting from the views I expressed, and many offering examples of how excellent peer-reviewed publications in good journals, sometimes associated with very respectable research grants, had vanished into the ether when it came to the last Research Assessment Exercise (RAE). Outside education as a discipline (and even there . . . ) , RAE subject panels appear to consider that research into learning technology is not really worth counting. University teachers of languages, history, biology, engineering and so on may produce seminal papers on learning technology within their subject-areas, and for the purposes of their department's RAE rating they might as well not have bothered - indeed, they may even be reprimanded for not having aimed more directly between the RAE goalposts. Even within disciplines such as computer science or psychology, where one might imagine that much research into educational technology would comfortably fit, I know of colleagues who have been on the receiving end of such discouragement.

DOI:10.1080/0968776970050301