This article (16 page PDF) is a response to a 2025 OECD report (26 page PDF) on "how to strengthen the role of research and initial teacher education institutions in knowledge mobilisation." Gert Biesta argues "the report assumes that the research is available but that for some reasons it doesn't reach policy and practice." There's an assumption that there is a sort of 'knowledge' - singular - around which there is evidence and consensus, and which practitioners should simply "make use of". But this represents a misunderstanding of 'practrice'. "A practice rather is collective activity held together, so we might say, by its purpose. And this purpose is not external to the practice." Different cultures, regions and industries have difference conceptions of this purpose, and you can't simply 'apply research' to them. Biesta describes this as "education's double history," corresponding to poiesis and praxis, but if we look at it, there are multitudes of histories. All in all, "what teachers do is never 'just' an instrument for bringing about certain 'effects.'"
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