The Education, Curriculum and Policy Scholarship Playbook: A Practical Guide to Doing Research in Education, Curriculum and Policy (Education, Curriculum and Policy Playbooks Book 1)

McLain, M ORCID: 0000-0002-8691-3155 (2026) The Education, Curriculum and Policy Scholarship Playbook: A Practical Guide to Doing Research in Education, Curriculum and Policy (Education, Curriculum and Policy Playbooks Book 1). Education, Curriculum and Policy Playbooks . kyōshi. ISBN 978-1-83709-927-6

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Abstract

This playbook is a practical guide to designing, conducting, analysing, and defending research in education, curriculum, and policy. Its central argument is that research is best understood as a series of informed decisions rather than a collection of isolated methods. The book emphasises maintaining a coherent "golden thread" linking:

Research problem → aims → objectives → questions → methodology → methods → data → findings → conclusions.

Major Sections

Practitioner Inquiry

Action research, lesson study, learning study, reflective practice, improvement science, and self-study.
Focuses on researching and improving one's own educational practice.
Research Problems and Questions

Multiple ways of identifying research problems:
Literature gaps
Problems of practice
Policy-driven issues
Equity and justice concerns
Theory-driven inquiries
Problematisation and discourse approaches
Sampling and Participants

Probability and non-probability sampling approaches.
Emphasis on transparency, transferability, and analytical rather than statistical generalisation in small-scale educational research.
Research Ethics

Informed consent, confidentiality, safeguarding, insider research, power relations, data protection, AI use, and BERA ethical principles.
Distinguishes procedural ethics from ethics-in-practice.
Argumentation and Discourse

Toulmin
Walton
Freeman
Pragma-Dialectics
Habermas
Aristotle
Perelman
Fisher
Critical Discourse Analysis
Bacchi's WPR framework
Research Methods

Interviews, focus groups, surveys,
observation,
document analysis, visual methods, diaries, artefact analysis,
learning analytics, and elicitation techniques.
Data Analysis

Qualitative: thematic analysis, grounded theory, IPA, framework analysis, discourse analysis, conversation analysis, narrative analysis.
Quantitative: descriptive and inferential statistics suitable for smaller samples, effect sizes, confidence intervals, non-parametric methods.
Research Approaches

Case study
Ethnography
Phenomenology
Grounded theory
Narrative inquiry
Action research
Design-based research
Mixed methods
Q methodology
Policy analysis
Systematic reviews
Research Paradigms

Positivism
Post-positivism
Interpretivism
Critical theory
Pragmatism
Critical realism/social realism
Post-structuralism
Post-qualitative/new materialist perspectives
Philosophical Foundations

Ontology
Epistemology
Methodology
Axiology
Praxeology
Putting Research Together

Final chapter presents an eight-stage inquiry design process:
Define problem
Form research questions
Select methodology
Choose participants
Address ethics
Develop argument
Gather and analyse data
Clarify positionality and theoretical framework

Overall Character

The playbook is:
Practitioner-oriented
Methodologically pluralist
Strongly focused on curriculum and policy scholarship
Explicit about philosophical assumptions
Rich in comparative tables, frameworks, examples, and decision-making tools

Its distinctive contribution is connecting practical educational inquiry with deeper methodological, theoretical, and philosophical foundations while maintaining a consistent focus on research coherence and defensibility.

Item Type:	Book
Additional Information:	Copyright 2026 Matt McLain. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means — electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise — without the prior written permission of the author and publisher, except for brief quotations used in reviews or scholarly work with due acknowledgement.
Uncontrolled Keywords:	Liverpool Institute for Research in Education (LIFE)
Subjects:	L Education > L Education (General) L Education > LB Theory and practice of education L Education > LB Theory and practice of education > LB2300 Higher Education
Divisions:	Education
Publisher:	kyōshi
Date of acceptance:	1 April 2026
Date of first compliant Open Access:	17 August 2026
Date Deposited:	17 Aug 2026 12:50
Last Modified:	17 Aug 2026 14:38
URI:	https://researchonline.ljmu.ac.uk/id/eprint/29154

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