About

This contribution argues that educational research has (not) mastered the values needed for decision making and change. The main issue is the yawning gap between theory and practice in educational research exemplary in a professional field like lifelong learning. A variety of types of research is presented to show the differences of orientation, process, methodology and goal or focus. Next the issue of the existing gap between theory and practice is approached by con-trasting in an exemplary way two extreme types of research: the traditional empirical-analytical and the action research paradigm. Workers within these two opposite paradigms are passionate researchers, lecturers or practitioners but do have different epistemological assumptions and be-liefs and moreover feel committed to different professional and scientific or academic responsibili-ties. Following this reasoning, the need for a social responsibility theory to bridge the yawning gap between theory and practice is discussed thoroughly. Does a theory transcend the affective sepa-ration between researchers from the two extreme paradigms? Is there a perspective for such a theory?