This is a selective summary of parts of the above text.

1. Introduction: The Three Rs of Educational Research

Research is to be explicated as a mode of interrogation.

The three Rs of research, with which the book is concerned, are:

1. Reading
2. pRoducing
3. wRiting.

Four aims for the book are described:

1. To apprentice readers to the research mode of interrogation
2. To introduce/develop the language and techniques of research methods
3. To alert readers to some difficulties and offer some solutions
4. To allow readers to apply the approach to reading, producing and writing research.

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2. Declaring an Interest: The Empirical and Theoretical Contexts of the Research

Empirical and Theoretical Domains and the Research Process

Research is empirical, which means that 'the enquiry should, in part, justify any claims that it makes in terms of reference to experience of the field to which these claims relate.' This field is the empirical field (e.g. homework for 7-11 year olds). In order to conduct an investigation within the empirical field the researcher will narrow the focus of research to the empirical setting (e.g. homework practices in three UK primary schools) from whence data will be drawn and (necessarily) recontextualised (i.e. transformed by the processes of selection and organisation adopted).

Since the activity of research, in making embodied knowledge explicit, is bound to transform the content of the empirical setting there arises an epistemological paradox, i.e. what is described cannot be the raw experience itself. To minimise the shortcomings of adopting any single view two or more methodological approaches may be applied to the same problem. This is triangulation. Although triangulation 'may be of value in expanding the empirical setting' it cannot overcome the epistemological paradox, however.

The empirical field and setting constitute one arena in which research takes place. Alongside and interacting with it is a second arena, namely the theoretical field (e.g. psychology, sociology, professional knowledge...) within which is located the specific problem of the research.

In high quality research the structures of these two arenas will be clarified and made explicit, but probably not in advance: '...we are asserting that the research process itself is properly conceived of as the construction of the theoretical and empirical as increasingly coherent and systematically organized and related conceptual spaces... a continuous and productive process.'

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Declaring an Interest: First Steps Towards a Research Question

A research question will arise from the researcher's local situation (problems, shortcomings, insights) within the context of wider professional debates and issues. Articulating the research question will involve opening up the theoretical space in which it is placed. Reference to existing literature related to the question will help bring this about.

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Brown, A. & Dowling, P. (1998), Doing Research/Reading Research: A Mode of Interrogation for Education, London, Falmer Press