There is a well-known gap between research and practice. While there are investments in some strategies to address this gap, they are often not drawing from the existing research on how to improve research use. This article shares what we understand about the many ways research is used in education, why educators may use research, and under what…

Dr Mahmoud M. S. Abdallah's article, "The New Territory of Educational Research in TESOL/TEFL: What Novice Researchers Should Know", provides a comprehensive guide for novice researchers in Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL) and Teaching English as a Foreign Language (TEFL). It emphasises the importance of research…

Research can be a powerful tool informing public administration teaching. This article takes the distinctive approach of exploring its use through the prism of the research itself by considering 10 publications by the article's authors. The existing literature revolves around students learning about the craft of research or research findings. By…

One of the major successes of advanced quantitative methods has been its seeming ability to provide unbiased determinations of which education practices are effective for education in general and for improving the educational achievement and opportunity of the neediest students. The power of this methodology as applied in the top education…

Two recent reports contend that the introduction of school choice can promote economic development in economically distressed urban areas. The first report, published by EdChoice, presents a case study of a charter school that has, according to the report, contributed to the economic development of the city of Santa Ana, California. The second…

As part of an ongoing series of reports by the National Council on Teacher Quality (NCTQ), "Learning About Learning: What Every New Teacher Needs to Know" makes broad claims about teacher education based on a limited analysis of textbooks and syllabi. The report argues that teacher education materials, specifically educational psychology…

When teaching is considered as a collaborative activity, the aim of research projects in schools needs to exceed the individual and personal levels and aim to contribute to research-informed reflection of a team of teachers. Within this multiple case study, we adapted the graduation research project within a primary teacher education programme,…

In the current article, we consider the influential position of the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) and discuss several methodological areas that demonstrate the need for caution when using and interpreting PISA results. We motivate our argument by briefly describing the program's increased influence in educational policy…

The title is catchy and positive: "Smart, Skilled, and Striving: Transforming and Elevating the Teaching Profession." It sounds like a teacher-friendly approach to improving the perceptions and experiences of teachers working in classrooms. However, this report published by the Center for American Progress uses popular rhetoric and sound…

"The Integration Anomaly" explores a "puzzling divergence" between changes in metropolitan residential and school segregation. Based on a review of existing literature, it argues that the best way to address rising school segregation is to decouple school assignment from neighborhoods through universal school choice. The report…

This Center for American Progress report examines whether states' adoption of standards-based policies predicts low-income students' NAEP achievement trends in fourth and eighth grade math and reading throughout the 2003-2013 decade. The report claims to analyze changes across five separate two-year intervals, but it only reports findings for…

This paper is about the relationship between research, policy and practice in education. It outlines reasons for the increased interest in research and its impact and describe some of the difficulties in studying this relationship. A conceptualization of the knowledge mobilization process is presented that identifies three overlapping and…

Valid, scientific research is critical for ascertaining the effects of instructional techniques on learners with disabilities and for guiding effective special education practice and policy. Researchers in fields such as psychology and medicine have identified serious and widespread shortcomings in their research literatures related to replication…

Educational effectiveness research (EER) has accumulated much knowledge in the areas of school effectiveness research (SER), teacher effectiveness research (TER) and school/system improvement research (SSIR). Yet many schools and educational systems are not making enough use of the material and their insights. The article reviews evidence of…

The article "Getting lost in translation" by Harris, Chapman, Muijs and Reynolds addresses the engagement of policy-makers and educational practitioners with (the results of) educational effectiveness and improvement research. In this commentary the article is discussed from the perspectives of research utilisation, the solidity of the…