Policy and practice: research touchstone in Australia

Education is an arena of our society where change and progress are quite appropriate, though these two elements do not always go hand-in-hand. Whether "change" equalled "progress" in the 1980s is the still unanswered research-policy practice question. This was a time of financial restraint in Australia, first instituted by the national conservative Fraser government. This was also a time when commonwealth and state governments reclaimed control of many school-based programs to such an extent that classroom practices in the 1990s are markedly different, intellectually and politically. Research on policy and practice in the processes of educational decision-making in Australia the 1980s and early 1990s is a rich diverse field, even though Fitzgerald (1990: 16-17) points to the general "gutlessness of Australian academics" to attempt to contribute to the construction of public policy.