Education policy continues to press for increased use of research evidence in decision-making, yet decades of research point to weak links between research and practice. We see evidence-informed improvement not as a problem with schools, but with a larger evidence-use ecosystem. As a step toward building and strengthening multidirectional paths…

In support of the Every Child Ready Chicago initiative, Start Early has begun to explore the creation of a Chicago early childhood research consortium that would bring together researchers, policymakers, practitioners, families, and community representatives across sectors in a robust, long-term research-practice partnership focused on helping…

In this paper, I analyse the history of teacher education in Australia from 1974 to the current policy moment in which questions are increasingly being asked about the quality of teaching and teacher education. Teacher education is, and has been, a highly scrutinised domain in Australia. Since the 1970s, we have seen more than 100 reviews of…

The implementation of programs and practices that reflect the best available research and evaluation is a new and very promising development in the out-of-school time field. However, successfully implementing a new, evidence-based program or practice is a major challenge for practitioners. This challenge is due, in large part, to a lack of…

Effective action in educational development is dependent upon an adequate consideration of requisite variety. An adequate consideration of requisite variety includes a delineation of the information field appropriate for the decisionmaking system. An interaction of the information domain with each state of development, state-set, and whole would…

This paper presents an R & D planning system (RDPS) that consists of (1) a multistage model for formulating projects and (2) a "reward" model for selecting projects. The system is based on a combination of decisionmaking and operations research approaches. Using the system concept, the R & D process is defined in three interrelated terms --…

There are basically four dimensions to a systems analysis that we find in current educational research: (1) Collecting information, (2) analyzing input-output relationships, (3) deriving models built upon these relationships to evaluate alternatives and to derive feasible solutions, and (4) attempting to derive the best solution consistent with…

Initial objectives of this pilot study were to: define the effectiveness and structure of administration in institutions of higher education; explore and identify measures of administrative effectiveness and structure; test the practicability of such definitions and measures against on-going processes at Sussex University; direct, coordinate, and…

In this paper, the author develops a funding decision model that is appropriate to the evaluation of specific educational projects in an urban school system. He has attempted to develop a model that the central administration of a school district could use to compare projects and estimate which projects would be more likely to provide the most…

Describes the advantages of an ecological and active approach to classroom management, presents an analysis of how such an approach might be developed, and discusses several issues which need to be addressed in order to improve classroom management. Twenty-nine references are listed. (Author/CHC)

Four alternative designs for educational systems are sketched consonant with existing and potential scientific and technical knowledge and are contrasted with the prevailing generic educational system and each other. Systems are compared for relevance and productivity, for information contained in their proficiency tests, and for their capability…

This presentation comprises the results of a symposium designed to examine some critical PPB implementation problems, suggest alternatives to some current practices in educational program budgeting, reply to some criticisms of the effectiveness of program budgeting as a resource allocation and planning tool, and to consider the future role of…

This report explores some techniques that could assist educational managers in their attempts to arrive at more optimal input and output mixes. Following a review of the literature on input-output analyses in education and a description of the Pennsylvania Educational Quality Assessment Program (the basis of the present study), an empirical…

This paper describes a methodology for helping institutional research assess its roles and its effectiveness in supporting decision-making at all institutional levels. The paper discusses how to meet this goal by planning, doing, checking, and acting. Planning requires the understanding of the roles of the data custodian, the broker, and the…

This book is devoted to a systems analysis of the teaching process in a single slum school classroom in which the teacher was a participant-observer researcher. The research approach used in the study is termed the "microethnography of the classroom" and is derived from social and behavioral theory. Chapters are devoted to the methodology of this…