Conceptions of education research as independent and serving the interests of truth have come to represent freedoms that emerge from the application of intellectual inquiry. Critiques of education research and its relevance to the enhancement of education, coupled with neoliberal market-led pragmatism, have contributed to the erosion of an enlightenment heritage. In this nexus, empowerment is replaced by control. There is an absence of analysis of the Scottish National Party’s education research policy which means its regime of governance through logics of quantification productive of asymmetries of power has gone unrecognized. It is argued this policy produces a metrification of teaching and research which constructs teaching and research as servile to external discourses. These encroachments into autonomy and professionalism are intellectually clandestine as they operate through assumptive worlds holding that evidence is value-free rather than the outcome of constructivist processes driven by choice. Orwell’s dystopian vision of a subjugated society informs the meaning of the argument in the paper—that technologies of control and surveillance re-shape teacher autonomy and instrumentalize research such that its power to arbitrate is emasculated.

作为独立的，服务于真理的利益的教育研究概念已经代表了从智力探究的应用中产生的自由。对教育研究的批判及其与加强教育的相关性，再加上新自由主义市场主导的实用主义，对启蒙传统的侵蚀作出了贡献。在这种联系中，授权被控制所取代。苏格兰民族党的教育研究政策缺乏分析，这意味着其通过量化逻辑产生的权力不对称的治理体制尚未得到认可。有人认为，这项政策使教学和研究得到了美化，从而使教学和研究成为对外部话语的奴役。这些对自主性和专业性的侵犯在理论上是秘密的，因为它们通过假设世界来运作，这些世界认为证据是没有价值的，而不是选择驱动的建构主义过程的结果。奥威尔对被压制社会的反乌托邦式眼光说明了该论点的含义：控制和监视技术重塑了教师的自主权，并使研究工具化，从而使其仲裁权得以体现。