Increasing Education Research’s Standing as a Public Good

• In Event: To Know Is Not Enough: Commissioned Essay Writers—Sunday (Coffee)

Abstract

Non satis scire (to know is not enough), which is the 2012 AERA Annual Conference theme selected by President-Elect Arnetha Ball, speaks dramatically and forcefully to our responsibilities as members of a professional association of researchers. It calls on each of us to do something helpful, positive, and constructive with what we have had the privilege of learning from our research. It also reminds us, on a moment’s reflection, that the very impetus to know, as well as the direction that our inquiries take, draws on this assumption of making just such contributions.
Now, there are many ways of doing something valuable with the knowledge that we acquire in our study of education. We draw on such knowledge in our teaching, as well as in our work with teachers, schools, administrators, and policymakers. We share our work with other
scholars by presenting it at conferences and publishing it in scholarly journals and books. Does that mean that we are already doing enough with what we know?

Author

• John M. Willinsky, Stanford University