David Scott is Professor of Curriculum, Pedagogy and Assessment and Faculty Director of Teaching and Learning at the IOE, UCL's Faculty of Education and Society, University College London, UK. Robin Usher was Professor of Research Education and Director of Research Training at RMIT University, Melbourne, Australia. He is now a freelance consultant.

'A rigorous and thought-provoking text which challenges the intellectual sloppiness that informs much educational research. The book challenges us constantly to reconsider our own assumptions and those of others in evaluating the claims that are made about what research does and does not, can or cannot, tell us.' Richard Edwards, Professor of Education and Head of The Stirling Institute of Education, University of Stirling, UK

• 1. Introduction \ Part 1: Knowledge and Philosophy \ 2. Philosophical Issues in Educational Research \ 3. Critical Approaches to Research \ 4. Forms of Reasoning \ Part 2: Strategies and Methods \ 5. Experiments and Quasi-Experiments \ 6. Survey and Correlational Designs \ 7. Qualitative Research Design, Case Study and Theory Building \ 8. Observation \ 9. Interviews \ 10. Biographical and Autobiographical Methods \ Part 3: Themes and Issues \ 11. Ethics and Educational Research \ 12. Evaluation and Research \ 13. Criteria for Evaluating Research \ 14. Transgressive Research \ References \ Indexes