Strategic Education Research Partnership (2003) / Chapter Skim
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2. Helping Hercules: Why Infrastructure Matters
2. Helping Hercules: Why Infrastructure Matters
Pages 29-51
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From page 29... ...
there are cases in which this type of research and development has been carried out with productive results that are directly applicable to improving classroom practice; and (c) this type of work, even when highly successful, has been difficult to sustain without the proposed research and development infrastructure.
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From page 30... ...
The biggest gains were in decoding and in reading sight words. No program could be 30 STRATEGIC EDUCATION RESEARCH PARTNERSHIP
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From page 31... ...
The research team is observing teachers' instructional practices in order to develop and test hypotheses about the contributors to differences in teacher effectiveness. The preliminary results point to another important issue: the programs as a group post substantial gains in bringing students up to grade level in word reading, but they make far less progress in narrowing the yawning gap in reading comprehension and vocabulary.
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From page 32... ...
They point out, however, that the operative norms at these meetings are not those of a network of researchers engaged in an effort to collectively advance a field, but rather those of a professional competition that minimizes the opportunity for productive collaboration. In their view, the role of a SERP network in fostering an environment in which the operative norms are those of productive collaboration would make a significant contribution to the productivity of work like 32 STRATEGIC EDUCATION RESEARCH PARTNERSHIP
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From page 33... ...
is a technique developed by Annemarie Palincsar and Anne Brown two decades ago to engage students more deeply in understanding the meaning of text. The active processes of making sense of a text involved in skilled reading comprehension are taught to students explicitly.1 The teacher initially models four strategies: questioning unclear content, summarizing meaning paragraph by paragraph, clarifying comprehension problems, and predicting what will come next.
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From page 34... ...
I purchased a tape-to-tape video recorder and when people ask for this video tape, I ask them to send me a blank VHS tape in a stamped, self34 STRATEGIC EDUCATION RESEARCH PARTNERSHIP
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From page 35... ...
. Third, it would have been ideal to be able to have supported conversations with other researchers who were similarly investigating class-wide models of comprehension instruction to talk about how our work was complementary and where it differed and the implications of these differences for professional development.
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From page 37... ...
Unlike many such small-scale success stories in cognitive science, this project was able to grow to the point at which the cognitive tutors now are used in 33 of the 100 largest school districts in the United States and are interacting with about 200,000 students yearly. A number of features were critical to making this successful transition: 1.
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From page 39... ...
There is no reason why the cognitive tutors could not be extended to these topics but they have not (from Learning and Instruction: A SERP Research Agenda, Box 3.3~. · ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ THE COGNITIVE TUTOR ALGEBRA I IN AN OKLAHOMA SCHOOL DISTRICT Pat Morgan, mathematics coordinator for the Moore Independent School District in Oklahoma, knew Carnegie Learning Corporation's Cognitive Tutor Algebra I had been rated favorably by the U.S.
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From page 40... ...
W O U ~ D S E R P H A V E M A D E A D ~ F F E R E N C E ~ The introduction of the Cognitive Tutor Algebra I in the Moore school district suggests that a well-designed test of whether a curriculum improves student outcomes can stimulate productive change. It also suggests that the conditions for such a study, including random assignment and intrateacher program comparisons, can be created in normal school settings.
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From page 41... ...
A research and development infrastructure prepared to support efforts like this and to guide research design could make more commonplace what is now the outcome of the combination of happenstance and extraordinary effort by a very dedicated and insightful school administrator. It could also make the very instructive finding from one school district easily available to other districts, so that thousands of other Pat Morgans could persuade their teachers of the value of trying a new instructional approach (Pat Morgan, mathematics coordinator, Moore Independent School District, Moore, Oklahoma, personal communication, November 2002~.
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From page 42... ...
She was engaging in precisely the kind of problem-oriented, practice-embedded research that is needed to improve education, and she successfully designed and carried out a very sophisticated study. She did not, however, know how to analyze the results or write up the findings for broader 42 STRATEGIC EDUCATION RESEARCH PARTNERSHIP
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From page 43... ...
The important work done both by a practitioner and by researchers came together in a way that allowed both practice, and the knowledge base, to advance. But while the success is worthy of celebration, it is disquieting that so many of the critical events were a matter of chance, as Snow makes clear: Many events had to converge to enable EASE to be disseminated and implemented outside White Bear Lake.
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From page 45... ...
The mission of the consortium is to undertake research of high technical quality that can inform education policy making and school improvement efforts. The 1988 Chicago school reform decentralized authority and accountability in the schools.
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From page 46... ...
But many believe that the students who appeared in their classrooms do not have the skills to move on to more advanced work. The "theory of action" in the legislation, according to the consortium research team, is three pronged (Roderick et al., 46 STRATEGIC EDUCATION RESEARCH PARTNERSHIP
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From page 47... ...
They did not do better than students who were previously socially promoted; only one-fourth of the eighth graders and one-third of the sixth and third graders stayed in the system and passed the test cutoff at the end of the repeated year. Results for third graders were particularly troublesome, since the WHY INFRASTRUCTURE MATTERS 47
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From page 49... ...
W O U ~ D S E R P M A K E A D ~ F F E R E N C E ~ The work of the consortium is of tremendous importance not only to Chicago, but also to all schools particularly those in large, urban school districts. Despite the success of the consortium in conducting high-quaTity social science research that is directly applicable to education policy and practice, its Tongterm viability is in question.
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From page 51... ...
But they also highlight the difficulty of undertaking and sustaining those efforts in the absence of a new research and development infrastructure. SERP would facilitate such efforts in the future by · Providing a place for researchers and practitioners interested in research to link up; · Providing institutional support for negotiating collaborations between researchers, school administrators, and teachers; · Providing program steering and stable funding to allow successful efforts to be carried forward; · Providing research and data collection protocols to limit the role of happenstance in the production of highqualit~v outcomes; and · Providing regular opportunities for those involved in education research and development in different sites to learn from and build on each other's work.
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