FIRE Mission Statement

Stating the mission is useful, in order to focus action, especially when many individuals are involved. And in the creation of a Facilitation Institute for Research in Education (FIRE), many individuals must be involved.

What we need is not to conduct research, but to enable many others to do research. And we have certain expectations from that research. Here is some step-by-step thinking.

1. We can start with the mission that is implied by the name:
   "To facilitate research in education"

2. Research in education already takes place in great numbers, but it seems like much of it doesn't lend itself to action in the field. Granted, basic research doesn't always lead to immediate implementation. If we limited ourselves only to applied research - research where we know in advance what we want to do with the results, we will miss unexpected parts of the picture. Parts that have the potential of becoming useful. This was illustrated many times in the research of physics, where phenomena like electromagnetism, radio waves and lasers were discovered and researched long before it became clear how they can be used. Still, it is possible to do research with an eye on the possible applications, with some attention to specific problems that can be solved. This is close to what FIRE is about: We are looking for useful, applicable research, that can lead to action. Again, this is not meant as a claim that there is no value for pure research in education - just that FIRE is concerned with relatively applicable research.
   So, maybe "To facilitate applicable research in education"

3. Being aware that my very study of education research so far is short and limited, I still get a clear impression that many education research projects end up floating alone in science-space: They describe a specific situation with a limited group of participants as seen through the eyes of a limited group of researchers. Such studies are often not repeatable. And the suggested theories and explanations being derived from many such studies are not falsifiable or refutable - there is no potential way to show that they are wrong. Karl Popper wouldn't have considered such studies and theories as scientific. He rather liked falsifiability.
   So, possibly "To facilitate applicable scientific research in education"

4. Another limitation of a study that is limited to a specific group of participants and researchers is that it don't lend themselves to be building blocks that can be accumulated and be built upon. Humanity's ability to educate the masses needs to catch up with a lot of changes that already occurred in the past few centuries, and then it needs to stay abreast of the ongoing fast changes in the 21^st century and beyond. The knowledge needs to be built up.
   So: "To facilitate scientific research in education, aimed at building up a body of applicable knowledge"

5. This mission statement does not identify a static goal to be achieved. It is more a statement of duty than a statement of mission. This makes some sense because FIRE is expected to be active for at least a few decades. One way to turn this into an accomplishable mission statement is to ask what it would take to make FIRE unnecessary.
   "To create a self sustaining scientific discipline of education research, continuously building up applicable knowledge"

FIRE will work along these lines - whether as a duty or as a mission, whether with the wording above or with better wording. To do that, FIRE should acquire the capability to provide services, to make resources (including financial) available to researchers, and to affect the culture of education research.