Research into information and communications technologies: where now?

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Abstract
The 2001 United Kingdom Research Assessment Exercise highlighted a number of issues of great importance to those concerned with research on the effective use of information and communications technologies (ICT), and this special issue is a response to the ensuing debate. This introductory article provides an overview of the concerns about the quality of ICT research that emerged during the five-year period of evaluation and presents some possible ways forward for the ICT educational research community. Whilst it can clearly be demonstrated that there is excellent research in this sub-domain, concerns about the lack of theoretical grounding and the individual, often idiosyncratic, nature of much of the activity have been cited as weaknesses of our research. Educational research in general does not always value the significance of work in ICT, and whether the criticism is valid or not, we need to address this perception. This article and those of colleagues in this issue explore the validity of the criticisms levelled at ICT research and the degree to which such criticisms are specific to this sub-domain. On a more positive note, the articles start the quest for possible ways by which we might raise the collective quality of our research. The challenge is to find an integrative theoretical framework across an area of research that is fragmented by specialist concerns, in order to build intellectual bridges both with colleagues within education itself and also within other disciplines.

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