As the primary agency responsible for enforcing federal civil rights laws in the educational context, the U.S. Department of Education Office for Civil Rights (OCR) issues policy guidance to help ensure that school districts and universities understand their legal obligations. These policy guidance documents have direct connections to topics…

In this commentary, the author argues that there is a considerable degree of similarity between research in the hard sciences and education and that this provides a useful lens for thinking about what constitutes "rigorous" and "scientific" education research. He suggests that the fundamental property of hard science research…

The nexus between research and policy in higher education as in other sectors of society is multimodal and not adequately captured by the notion of a cultural gap between the world of practice and the world of research. Neither can the relationship be seen as unidirectional. This paper sketches out the range of uses of research in policy-making,…

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…

Objectives: This article describes the Standard Interview for Evidence Use (SIEU), a measure to assess the level of engagement in acquiring, evaluating, and applying research evidence in health and social service settings. Method: Three scales measuring input, process, and output of research evidence and eight subscales were identified using…

Different research designs answer different questions. Educators cannot use nonexperimental quantitative research designs, such as descriptive surveys and correlational research, to determine definitively that an intervention causes improved student outcomes and is an evidence-based practice. However, such research can (a) inform educators about a…

Research findings on effective teaching are being used to identify potential "master teachers." This paper discusses six problem areas with respect to using research results in this manner. The first problem area is the question of whether the concept of "master" is necessarily implied by the concept of "effectiveness." In effect, does knowledge…

Effect Sizes (ES) are an increasingly important index used to quantify the degree of practical significance of study results. This paper gives an introduction to the computation and interpretation of effect sizes from the perspective of the consumer of the research literature. The key points made are: (1) "ES" is a useful indicator of the…

This book is designed to provide knowledge about educational research and to help graduate students in education organize and conduct their own research. No prior familiarity with the principles, procedures, or terminology of educational research is required. Chapters are: (1) "Educational Research: Its Nature and Rules of Operation"; (2) "Types…