Richard Pring was Emeritus Professor at the Department of Education, and Emeritus Fellow of Green Templeton College, University of Oxford, UK. He was Lead Director of the six year Nuffield Review of 14-19 Education and Training for England and Wales, and until 2003, Professor of Educational Studies, University of Oxford, UK, where he was Director of the Department.

• Introduction; Aims, Values and Standards; Philosophy, Common Sense and Educational Theory; Educational Research; Introduction; Part 1 - Aims, Values and Standards; Education as a Moral Practice; Educating Persons; The Aim of Education: Liberal or Vocational? The Context of Education: Monastery or Market Place? Subject-centred Versus Child-centred Education - a False Dualism; Standards and Quality in Education; Faith Schools: Can they be Justified? Part 2 - Philosophy, Common Sense and Educational Theory; 8. The Language of Curriculum Analysis; 9. Common Sense and Education; 10. Philosophy of Education and Educational Practice; Part 3 - Educational Research; 11. Evidence Based Policy and Practice; 12. Truth, Knowledge and Power; 13. Knowledge out of Control; 14. The 'False Dualism' of Educational Research; 15. The Virtues of an Educational Researcher; 16. The Future of Educational Research; Conclusion

'...Philosophers of education and curriculum theorists will welcome the opportunity to be reminded of the earlier papers and to see how the key themes that feature in Pring's work throughout this period are developed in the context of recent debates about educational research and the curriculum...Making the case for educational theory that draws upon and informs practice Pring engages in lively fashion with those sociologists of knowledge and abstract theoreticians who bamboozle and bewilder their readers with a technical language that adds nothing to our understanding of what happens in schools...as a classroom practitioner in the early 1970s trying to make sense of the ways that some of the more obscure educational research described the workd that I shared with my pupils and colleagues it was alwats a relief and pleasure to read teh cogent and clear analyses that characterized what Pring regers to in this book as his 'philosophical puzzling about what is too often taken for granted by unreflective politicians, officials and professionals'...this book will provide a welcome source of light.'   Volume 58, Number 1