Each edition of the IDRA Newsletter strives to provide many different perspectives on the issues in education topics discussed and to define its significance in the state and national dialogue. This issue focuses on Using Data for Action and includes: (1) Community and School Use of Data for College Readiness and Postsecondary Success (Karmen…

This randomized field trial comparing Strategies for Teaching based on Autism Research and Structured Teaching enrolled educators in 33 kindergarten-through-second-grade autism support classrooms and 119 students, aged 5-8 years in the School District of Philadelphia. Students were assessed at the beginning and end of the academic year using the…

Despite expansive improvements in both treatments and research, the majority of persons with autism use non-empirically supported interventions. One way to decrease the research-to-practice gap involves increasing the direct applicability of research findings to clinical settings. Effectiveness research achieves this goal by identifying treatments…

How can educational research have more impact? What processes of knowledge exchange are most effective for increasing the uses of research results? How can research-produced knowledge be better "mobilized" among users such as practicing educators, policy makers, and the public communities? These sorts of questions are commanding urgent…

Investigating University-School Partnerships: A Volume in Professional Development School Research, the fourth book in the PDS Research Series developed by the same editors, includes a collection of organized papers that represent the best and latest examples of practitioner thinking, research, and program design and evaluation in the field at the…

The No Child Left Behind Act has brought research, particularly scientific based research, beyond discussions in graduate schools and back into the consciousness of educators in the field. For many educators, it has been a long time since those discussions, and key concepts about educational research may have become hazy. In this fourth article of…

This article reviews how tutoring systems have been applied across specialized subject areas (e.g., music, horticulture, health and safety, social interactions). It summarizes findings, provides an analysis of skills learned within each tutoring system, identifies the respective methodologies, and reports relevant findings, implications, and…

Research on teaching can be concerned with teaching in general or it can be conducted with a single kind of subject matter. Which kind of research is more advantageous? This issue arises in the planning of programs of research on teaching. The generic approach looks for uniformities, concepts, and principles that apply across all or many subject…

Education researchers, practitioners, and policymakers alike are committed to identifying interventions that teach students more effectively. Increased emphasis on evaluation and accountability has increased desire for sound evaluations of these interventions; and at the same time, school-level data have become increasingly available. This article…

This booklet contains 29 articles about literacy that originally appeared in newspapers across Canada during September 1987. Many are based on the extensive findings of a national literacy survey of 2,398 Canadian adults commissioned by Southam Inc. The survey provided the first real statistics about the state of literacy in the country;…

Because research does not support the efficacy of any single service delivery arrangement for all mildly handicapped and at-risk students, the best approach is to maintain familiar service delivery structures while testing new ones. Direct instruction and behavioral interventions are probably the most effective classroom strategies with most of…

This special report is a look at illiteracy across Canada and in Saskatchewan. It includes stories by Peter Calamai, a national correspondent with Southam News, and by Regina Leader-Post reporters Kevin O'Connor, Zena Olijnyk, Ron Petrie, and Beverley Spencer. The publication also includes stories by the Canadian press. Calamai's stories are the…

This document presents 12 seminar papers describing research and development efforts in self-instructional programs being undertaken in six countries: the Philippines, Malaysia, Indonesia, Jamaica, Liberia, and Canada. The following are topics covered in the individual papers: research and development activities in primary schools; the technology…

English abstracts of fifty-five research projects commissioned by the National Board of Education in Finland between 1971 and 1973 are cataloged in this bulletin. The research reports are available from ten different centers listed in the front of the bulletin. The reports are listed consecutively based on an internal numbering system; abstracts…

A study of the use of and attitudes about language laboratories focused on teacher perceptions of their speed, accuracy, and motivational capability and on the extent to which these characteristics are exploited in classroom use by teachers and students. Observers in four British schools of English rated details of language laboratory use in a…