Your assessment of Downes may be correct. But I can tell you, that even in actual academic journals, "education research" is a level of self-sustaining garbage

Your assessment of Downes may be correct. But I can tell you, that even in actual academic journals, "education research" is a level of self-sustaining garbage like nothing else you have ever encountered. I say this as someone that completed a MEd among some others that went on to be absolute magicians in the classroom. But 90% of the reading assigned for that degree could have passed for parody.