There is an ongoing debate about how best to infuse "evidence" into school evaluation and reform efforts, and what role education researchers can play in this effort. A lot of support has been garnered for evidence-based reform or policies that place a premium on practices that have been proven effective using rigorous research methods;…

As teacher educators, we want our research to be influential in contributing to educational policy and practice, but there remains little understanding about ways in which teacher educators might more productively engage with each other and policy-makers so as to maximise their research impact. Drawing on an empirical study and policy document…

This paper explores the notion of evidence-informed policy making and the factors that have hindered its development in the UK to date. It then explores Flyvbjerg's notion of "phronetic" expertise and hypothesises that the learning that accrues from engaging with multiple cases could also lead to policy-makers developing competency in…

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…

Educational policy debates are no longer occurring exclusively in academic or governmental settings. Intermediary actors are promoting research using a variety of traditional and non-traditional media to advance and oppose policy agendas. Given the current policy arena, it is useful to re-examine the research underlying current reforms, and to…

The rise in the influence of and spending by educational philanthropists and foundations over the past two decades, especially in the area of market-based reforms, such as charter schools, vouchers, and merit pay, is evident across the United States. Largely due to philanthropic investments, relatively new educational intermediary organizations…

Valorisation is at the centre of many debates on the future of academic research. But valorisation has largely become narrowly understood in terms of universities' economic contributions through patenting, licensing, spin-off formation and technology transfer. This emergent restrictive definition of universities' societal impacts is a worrying…

This case study examined a multi-college community college district in northern California in a primarily rural area, to understand how their practices compared to management best practices designed to improve student success, barriers that may exist in implementing best practices, and how the institution may improve its own practices. The problem…

A project team from the Program Evaluation and Methodology Division of the U.S. General Accounting Office was asked to review recent research on education and summarize the findings for policymakers. This paper captures the team's reflections on the utility of education research for policymakers and others interested in improving schools. The…

This sourcebook synthesizes findings from studies on school improvement programs. The prefatory overview emphasizes key themes and issues addressed in the seven papers that comprise the body of the document, discusses the role of staff development, and examines the process of translating research into policy. The papers summarize the findings of…

Various educational practices resulting from research recommendations and the associated problems are described. The author suggests that educational research can create a more reliable foundation for policy decisions concerning the introduction of reforms, by evaluating their resulting effectiveness. Investigators should suggest more pertinent…

Describes current perspectives on evidence-based practices in psychology, medicine, and education; discusses challenges in the implementation and dissemination of research-based findings into schools; describes differences between current models of organizational behavior as studied in children's mental health services and in education; and…

Research on teaching, learning, and schooling, while extremely helpful, does not translate automatically into prescriptions for change, which requires support, trust, and adaptation rather than inflexible mandates that imply distrust. (CB)

Argues that a greatly expanded attention given to futurism in educational institutions and an intensive, systematic use of futures research applied to educational policy making can go a long way toward meeting criticisms that education is backwards looking and resistant to change, and that education tends to develop an in-capacity for future…

Focusing on whether and how research actually contributes to the formation of public policy, this paper explores the critical problems in the linkage between science production and the systems that formulate educational policy. The authors suggest that the utilization of social research is limited more by problems of integrating research into the…