In this paper I argue against a dominant view that social planning, supported by strategically located and tightly controlled research and development, is delivered from above and enacted downwards by the education system. As such the paper argues against a view taken by many theorists/politicians and reinforced by the major components of the educational bureaucracy. The Impact of Educational Research produces a warrant for an alternative form of thinking about the deeper forces of contemporary change including the ways that individuals are culturally formed and how they relate to each other. Understood this way, classrooms and schools are sites where new meanings and understandings are created and shared. The paper concludes with a call for consideration of new ways of understanding and discussing the context of change that educational research relates to.