The National Academies Press

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1. The Need for a New Partnership
Pages 9-28

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From page 9... ... It is perplexing that so high a national priority has to date generated so little sustained, systematic attention to the very complex problems of teaching and learning in the classroom, and has fostered so little fruitful collaboration among researchers, education practitioners, and policy makers. The current state of affairs cannot, in our view, be attributed simply to a lack of attention by researchers to problems that bear on student learning or to a shortage of intellectual paradigms that might profitably be applied. Read the entire page →
From page 10... ... But this will happen only if SERP, through its organization and program, develops and nurtures the capacity for the work that is envisioned. A critical element of the SERP plan, then, is to cultivate practitioners who have the knowledge and training needed to work effectively with research teams, helping to develop, test, and use research-based materials and methods; researchers who focus their work on the problems of educational practice as they develop and test hypotheses in collaboration with classroom teachers; and developers who have learned how to work with practitioners and researchers to incorporate robust findings into usable, carefully tested instructional methods, programs and tools, organizational environments, and professional development programs. Read the entire page →
From page 11... ... ; and a place where many kinds of funders of education research and development can become part of an ongoing collaborative effort to improve student outcomes. U N T A P P E D R E S O U R C E S Would a new research and development infrastructure improve educational outcomes? Read the entire page →
From page 12... ... A curriculum called Number Worlds deliberately puts the central conceptual structure for whole numbers in place in kindergarten (Griffin and Case, 1997~. Developed, tested, and refined with classroom teachers and children, the program consists primarily of 78 games that provide children with ample opportunity for hands-on, inquiry-based learning. Read the entire page →
From page 13... ... and in aspects of school organization (e.g., reduced class size, small schools) have demon� ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ The Number Worlds program has been tested with disadvantaged populations in numerous controlled trials in both the United States and Canada with positive results. Read the entire page →
From page 15... ... Making educational practice the focus of serious research attention will also require access to data that are at a level of specificity that allows for an understanding of the effects of characteristics of teachers, students, instructional programs, and classroom environments on learning outcomes. These data must be collected longitudinally if the Tong-term impact of policies, practices, and interventions is to be understood. Read the entire page →
From page 17... ... In making sense of everyday experience, people develop understandings, or informal models, of how the world works that shape everyday ideas about scientific relationships. These ideas usually contain partial truths but are not scientifically correct. Read the entire page →
From page 18... ... What a sustained R&D program can bring to bear, however, is the capacity to assess the theoretical underpinnings of a program in order to isolate those that show 18 STRATEGIC EDUCATION RESEARCH PARTNERSHIP Read the entire page →
From page 19... ... The study documented that Everyday Math improved student outcomes impressively, but only in some schools. More detailed analysis of results showed that the largest performance gains occurred in what the authors call "strong implementation" schools, where principals and teachers embraced the new pedagogical approach. Read the entire page →
From page 20... ... The 1998 fourth graders were the first cohort to have experienced the Everyday Math program throughout their elementary schooling. By 1998, performance improved dramatically. Read the entire page →
From page 21... ... They serve as three legs of the stool supporting student learning. While each is analytically independent of the other two, the effectiveness of any one in supporting student achievement depends on the strength of the other two. Read the entire page →
From page 23... ... What structure would make the resources residing in the disciplines of cognitive science, psychology, sociology, and economics more available to the improvement of educational practice? What would be necessary for the nation to cull knowledge from the naturally occurring variations in educational practice that could be broadly useful to policy makers? Read the entire page →
From page 24... ... It then would need to examine these systematically with careful attention to the conditions under which they have their effects, the particular population of students who are likely to benefit from them, and the teacher learning and organizational supports that are required for their effective adoption and implementation. In order to benef~tfrom advances in the relevant disciplines, SERP would need to create incentives for researchers to work on problems that have a likelihood of informing educational practice. Read the entire page →
From page 25... ... , the Strategic Education Research Partnership we propose, although different from other research and reform efforts, is emphatically not a replacement for them. For the SERP idea to come to life, education leaders will have to see its potential for leveraging existing investments by the federal government, state governments, school systems, and private-sector organizations. Read the entire page →
From page 26... ... Whatever the particular education reform interests of foundations be it urban schools or small schools or improving the prospects of minority and disadvantaged youth the accumulating SERP data on learning, instruction, and schools as organizations would help them shape their action programs; partnering with SERP would help improve their investments. If SERP had existed when Congress mandated the Statewide Systemic Initiative in 1990, for example, the National Sci26 STRATEGIC EDUCATION RESEARCH PARTNERSHIP Read the entire page →
From page 27... ... To understand under what conditions size makes a difference or how to take optimal advantage of small school size, it might engage SERP in a systematic exploration of the contributions of size, curriculum, teacher quaTity/professional development, and other factors critical to student performance. Over the long term, this should significantly increase the payoff of its experiment in education. Read the entire page →

From page 9...

... It is perplexing that so high a national priority has to date generated so little sustained, systematic attention to the very complex problems of teaching and learning in the classroom, and has fostered so little fruitful collaboration among researchers, education practitioners, and policy makers. The current state of affairs cannot, in our view, be attributed simply to a lack of attention by researchers to problems that bear on student learning or to a shortage of intellectual paradigms that might profitably be applied.

1. The Need for a New Partnership Pages 9-28

1. The Need for a New Partnership
Pages 9-28