Educational assessment evaluation and research: the selected works of Mary E. James

to me why this specific choice is made, as in describing research assessment the author seems to rely much on previous points made in terms of funding and competing commitments such as teaching versus research. In Section IV, the book offers a concise description of what universities are for, according to different schools of thought. Through these different perspectives, Furlong attempts to establish that the university is still definable. He concludes that those involved in the discipline of education should be more aware of its history, nature and tensions: ‘we need to be much clearer than we have been in the past as to what the purpose of the university-based study of education actually is. Those closest to the discipline need to be much more aware than they often have been about where the discipline comes from’ (p. 200). I believe that this book does an excellent job at beginning to unravel the tensions that underlie educational issues and the university as a whole. As such, it provides us with some of the tools needed to answer the questions he poses about the nature of the discipline of education within the university.