This keynote address discusses previous and ongoing efforts to reduce the persistent gap between research and practice in social work and offers recommendations for further bridging that gap. Key among those recommendations is the need to conduct descriptive outcome studies of efforts to adapt research-supported interventions in everyday practice…

Researchers, policy makers, and practitioners share a sincere interest in improving the human condition. Academics may be tempted to fault irrationality, ideology, or ignorance for the failure of research to inform policy and practice more powerfully, but policy makers and practitioners want academics to tell them "what works" in order to find a…

Responds to Elliot Eisner's claim (Phi Delta Kappan, v. 65, p. 447-52) that educational research often affects educational practice subtly rather than overtly. Also argues, like Eisner, that educational research often is too indebted to social science language and too removed from practical applications. (JW)

Reforms of educational practice arise from attractiveness of new ideas rather than from research findings because researchers import frameworks from other disciplines rather than using actual classroom phenomena as a basis for conceptual apparatuses and methods. (JW)

Defining research as systematic, self-critical inquiry open to public criticism and/or empirical test, the author considers the relevance of scientific, historical, and educational research to practice. He asserts that teachers must be involved in educational research and that researchers must justify themselves to practitioners, not practitioners…

Currently, findings of educational research are of little consequence to the curricular/instructional decisions of social studies teachers. Four basic conditions have created this inconsistency. (1) Since social studies teaching takes place among value and factual assumptions, decisions about educational practice are based more on value judgments…

The six chapters of this special issue focus on how and why educational research is, or is not, used by its intended audiences of policymakers, practitioners, and other educational researchers. Texts that accept the more traditional notions of research knowledge precede the more radical visions in this collection. (SLD)

Seven papers on educational research and educational improvement are presented. Robert Glaser, in the introduction, states that efforts to realize our aspirations for educational change, as well as in the social surroundings and public attitudes that aid school reforms, can be greatly assisted through research. John B. Carroll discusses…