The study compared information on autism accrued from the most recent research to the knowledge and beliefs of 80 experts and 950 caregivers. Results indicated that three areas emerge for further inservice training of caregivers: incidence and sex ratio, etiology, and attitudes toward public education of autistic children. (Author)

This book is a significant contribution to the field of sociology of school knowledge. It looks at the historical development of the field and argues that, although this field has appealed only to a limited audience, it has the potential to reach a larger audience of scholars if an alternative research agenda could be created. (SLD)

This article first assesses the existing "state of awareness of the research to practice gap" among 111 preservice educators. It then discusses the potential benefits associated with the improvement of this knowledge and describes a variety of programmatic options, structural and instructional, that may enhance preservice educators' knowledge,…

The purpose of this study was to identify the beliefs of Tennessee principals and teachers about the knowledge and skills required of leaders when using data to improve educational decision-making. Personal interviews were conducted with 10 principals and 10 teacher leaders certified by the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards.…

What principals know about emerging trends in personnel evaluation and how their knowledge has been influenced by school contexts was studied with 64 principals in 4 very different school districts. Principal responses reflected differing degrees of knowledge and implementation of ideas suggested by recent research. (SLD)

This paper contrasts research knowledge and practice knowledge in special education; describes factors that moderate the influence of research on practice, including teacher knowledge and learning, teacher attitudes and beliefs, and context; and considers issues in reconceptualizing the relationship between research and practice in special…

Describes five dimensions of multicultural education, focusing on the knowledge construction process in order to show how the cultural assumptions, frames of reference, and perspectives of mainstream scholars and researchers influence the ways in which academic knowledge is constructed to legitimize institutionalized inequity. (Author/SLD)

This paper explains why knowledge utilization has become so important and why so many perspectives on knowledge utilization exist. The field of research on knowledge utilization is immense and continues to grow rapidly. The reason for this, according to the paper, is that developed nations around the world are now in the so-called Knowledge Age.…

As part of the efforts of the Office of Educational Research and Improvement (OERI) in support of the national goals for education (America 2000), staff members are cataloguing and synthesizing research to connect it to federal practice. This paper presents the basic argument that synthesizing research and translating it into practice-oriented…

This book is an attempt to define the knowledge that beginning teachers should possess and addresses the difference between the "state of the art" and the "state of practice." It begins with three chapters that deal explicitly with general knowledge about teaching. Pedagogy is treated in chapters 4 through 8. These chapters deal with foundational…

This study provides a description and analysis of how teachers read research in light of prior beliefs about what research is and how it should influence teaching. Attention to teachers' beliefs has become an essential feature of studies designed to help understand research. The beliefs on which researchers and teacher educators typically focus…

Participants in a working conference on changing teacher practice made recommendations for future research. Two broad classes of recommendations were sought: findings from research on teaching most amenable to translation into staff development activities, and how that translation might occur so as to be most useful in bringing about desired…

Teacher knowledge is examined as a joint construction of teachers and researchers by analyzing contrasting narrative practices in the research interview in terms of how two teachers formulate versions of self. Seeing the narratives as representational technologies locates these teachers differently in the knowledge-constitutive networks of…