In this article, I share a design-based research intervention meant to help mathematics district leaders build their capacity to engage with research quality. I present my design (i.e., principles, key features, and intervention structure) and elaborate on how the features of the design allowed for mathematics district leaders' sensemaking of…

The research-to-practice gap describes the well-documented phenomena of researchers and practitioners working in silos, embedded in vastly different contexts. This "cultural divide" has several causes, including ineffective collaboration, inadequate understanding of context, and insufficient dissemination and translation of research.…

The need for better linkages between evidence and policymaking has been well established in the literature, with a heightened focus on the relationship between researchers, research utilisation and policy development. However, fostering such linkages using a policy network approach has seldom been discussed. This article revisits a key framework…

In this article, we describe and evaluate a research utilization initiative designed to bridge the teaching English as a second language (TESL) research-practice gap by fostering the formation of and supporting professional learning communities (PLCs) in adult ESL instructional contexts. We review literature on teachers' professional reading,…

As the integration of academic teaching and research with communities of practice is considered a major concern of public administration since its founding as a field, professional programmes were established on the premise that there is a positive relationship between practice and scholarship. However, the balance between them is considered…

Universities, across the globe, are increasingly judged on social and economic impact. An important initiative in the UK is the Research Excellence Framework (REF) 2014, which assessed the wider impact of university research. The Impact Case Studies, produced for REF 2014, provide a rich new source of information to explore the wider impact of…

A chasm is growing between our rapidly rising aspirations for our educational systems and what schools can routinely accomplish. Education needs an improvement paradigm--one that recognizes the complexity of the work of education and the wide variability in outcomes that our systems currently produce. This article sketches out such a paradigm. It…

The Policy Liaison Initiative (PLI) is a long-term knowledge translation initiative designed to support the use of Cochrane systematic reviews in health policy. A joint initiative between the Australasian Cochrane Centre and Australian Government Department of Health and Ageing, the PLI includes: 1) a community of practice for evidence-informed…

Communities of practice, which enable sustained collaboration among fellow practitioners, have potential for advancement of faculty development, but traditionally employ face-to-face meetings with inherent economic and geographical limitations. Our virtual community of practice (VCP) model exposes engineering instructors from across the country to…

Purpose: The aim of the paper is to analyse the use of Communities of Practice and Information and Communication Technology (ICT) to enhance knowledge sharing between researchers and advisors. The associated research question is to what extent ICT supported a virtual Community of Practice and has been effective in counteracting fragmentation…

Communities in which professionals share and create knowledge potentially support their continued learning. To realise this potential more fully, members are required to reflect critically. For learning at work such behaviour has been described as critically reflective work behaviour, consisting of six aspects: challenging groupthink, critical…

Critically reflective dialogues (CRD) are important for knowledge sharing and creating meaning in communities. CRD includes different aspects: being open about mistakes, critical opinion sharing, asking for and giving feedback, experimentation, challenging groupthink and research utilisation. In this article we explore whether CRD aspects change…

While much research utilisation literature shows an increasing emphasis on the added value of structural partnerships, which should facilitate prolonged interactions between researchers, policy makers and professionals, the question of how such collaborative structures "develop over time" and what consequences that has in terms of…

A variety of interventions have been attempted in education and other fields to increase the use of research use in policy and practice. However, there is still limited research on the impact of these interventions. This paper uses survey and qualitative data to analyze three interventions designed to increase research use among secondary school…