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Forging Common Ground: Fostering the Conditions for Evidence Use
Vivian Tseng shares lessons she and colleagues have learned about ways to connect research, policy, and practice—and, ultimately, to forge common ground. This essay discusses the importance of creating conditions for the productive integration of evidence, paving two-way streets for learning, and building relationships and trust.
Use of Research EvidenceResearch-Practice Partnerships -
Research-Practice Partnerships at the District Level: A New Strategy for Leveraging Research for Educational Improvement
Coburn, Penuel, and Geil define research-practice partnerships, identify the major types of partnerships that operate at the district level, describe challenges partnerships face and strategies for addressing these challenges. The authors draw on a review of existing research and interviews with participants in research-practice partnerships across the country.
Use of Research EvidenceEducation -
Systemwide Reform in Districts Under Pressure: The Role of Social Networks in Defining, Acquiring, and Diffusing Research Evidence
Published in the Journal of Educational Administration, this essay examines the way in which low‐performing schools and their district define, acquire, use, and diffuse research‐based evidence.
Use of Research EvidenceEducation -
The Research Says: Definitions and Uses of a Key Policy Term in Federal Lay and Local School-Board Deliberations
"Focusing on “research” as a key term in debates over U.S. education policy, this article compares the definition of research in the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) with the meanings and uses of research in school-‐board deliberations in three local districts in Wisconsin. While NCLB articulates a narrow view of research and a hierarchy of methods, the school boards operated with an expansive meaning of research and combined its use with other evidence types. Appreciating the role that values play in crafting public policy, these local debates balanced technical and public modes of reasoning."
Use of Research EvidenceEducation -
Evidence Use and the Common Core State Standards Movement: From Problem Definition to Policy Adoption
"Despite calls for research-based policies, other types of evidence also influence education policy, including personal experience, professional expertise, and normative values. This article focuses on the Common Core State Standards (CCSS) initiative, examining how research use varied over stages of the process and how it was integrated with other types of evidence. By drawing on elite interviews, we find that CCSS promoters and developers used evidence in much the way that policy analysis research would predict and that while research evidence was a major resource, it was combined with other types of evidence depending on political and policy goals at different stages of the CCSS process."
Use of Research EvidenceEducation -
How State Agencies Acquire and Use Research in School Improvement Strategies
This brief is based on an exploratory study that examined: "1) where state education agency staff search for research, evidence-based, and practitioner knowledge related to school improvement; 2) whether and how state education agency staff use research and these other types of knowledge to design, implement, and refine state school improvement policies, programs and practices; and, 3) how state education agencies are organized to manage and use such knowledge."
Use of Research EvidenceEducation -
A Conceptual Framework for Studying the Sources of Variation in Program Effects
"Evaluations of public programs in many fields reveal that (1) different types of programs (or different versions of the same program) vary in their effectiveness, (2) a program that is effective for one group of people might not be effective for other groups of people, and (3) a program that is effective in one set of circumstances may not be effective in other circumstances. This paper presents a conceptual framework for research on such variation in program effects and the sources of this variation. The framework is intended to help researchers — both those who focus mainly on studying program implementation and those who focus mainly on estimating program effects — see how their respective pieces fit together in a way that helps to identify factors that explain variation in program effects and thereby support more systematic data collection on these factors. The ultimate goal of the framework is to enable researchers to offer better guidance to policymakers and program operators on the conditions and practices that are associated with larger and more positive effects."
Research MethodsAnalyzing Multilevel Trials -
MET Database at the Institute for Social Research
This site enables users to apply for access to quantitative data and classroom videos created by the Measures of Effective Teaching (MET) project, funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.
Research MethodsGroup Randomized Trials