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Research works in subtle ways to influence policy decisions and practice. Bill Penuel and Anna-Ruth Allen outline three approaches that can help identify the uptake of ideas from research in practice.
Michigan State University’s Jennifer and Zachary Neal are using their recent research grant to investigate the ways that research evidence is identified, evaluated, and adopted by school district leaders. The Neals lead the Michigan School Program Information Project (MiSPI), which is focused on understanding how public school administrators find information about school programs, and how […]
Balancing impact and improvement is not a matter of doing the impossible. Rather, it is a matter of duplicating success.
Trust, Communication, and Context: Conditions that Help Intermediaries Bridge Research and Policy
Intermediaries can’t solve all the problems related to the use of research evidence by policymakers and practitioners, but they can serve as effective bridges between the producers and users. Understanding the conditions that enable intermediaries to be effective is key to sustaining these important connections.
Four Qualities that Shape Contexts for the Use of Research Evidence in Local Education Policy
Research is sometimes a messy process, full of trial and error, vision and revision. Recent scholarship has indicated that the use of research evidence can be messy, too. In Democracy, Deliberation, and Education, I venture into the messy setting of research use to better understand how school board members, as local educational policymakers, encounter various […]
Guanglei Hong is using advanced statistics to understand the nature of educational settings and the ways that public policies and teachers’ practices affect the academic growth of immigrant-origin students whose first language is not English. As a native Mandarin speaker, Hong continued to work on her English language skills throughout her graduate studies in the […]
One strategy that may bolster physicians’ use of research-informed guidelines is a greater emphasis on storytelling and narrative.
As a general pediatrician and child health services researcher, I care for a vulnerable population of children, many of whom have been exposed to violence. I have also spent the past 12 years examining the impact of intimate partner violence (IPV) on child health and well-being, and determining innovative primary care strategies to address psychosocial […]
We found that low-income boys who live alongside more affluent neighbors engaged in more antisocial behavior than their low-income peers growing up in concentrated poverty.
Without a willingness to explore a full range of possible contributions to continued inequality, our analyses are incomplete, and our interventions may miss the mark.
The freedom to criticize the system reflects, in part, the safety net of privilege.
In 2011 – 2012, I studied two leading community-based programs for youth who have dropped out of high school—observing activities, interviewing staff, and tracking participants for one year. I focused on programs at the community level because, although they receive little attention, these programs are where most young adults are served.
How do local, community-based programs for dropouts work? Do they make a difference for their participants? Programs developed and managed locally serve large numbers of youth, and their innovations are often the foundation for major national initiatives, including YouthBuild, STRIVE, and others. Yet most research in this area has focused on multi-site, national initiatives. While […]
As we move forward, our educational systems will need to more clearly define what is valued and recognized as evidence.
When policymakers, practitioners, and others use research evidence, they do so within a web of human relationships. The strength of research evidence alone doesn’t guarantee consistent interpretation or its implementation. But the quality of relationships does matter when it comes to understanding and using research evidence–and trust is a critical factor for determining the quality […]