Improving Student Learning A Strategic Plan for Education Research and Its Utilization (1999) / Chapter Skim
Currently Skimming:
1 Can Research Serve the Needs of Education?
1 Can Research Serve the Needs of Education?
Pages 9-20
The Chapter Skim interface presents what we've algorithmically identified as the most significant single chunk of text within every page in the chapter.
Select key terms on the right to highlight them within pages of the chapter.
From page 9... ...
The report is thus addressed to many audiences. It is addressed to the federal government federal dollars now constitute between 60 and 75 percent of total national resources for education research.
|
From page 10... ...
Yet, as the twentieth century ends, few people are fully satisfied with the condition of education in the United States Many individuals and institutions have been involved in school reform. From the great education reformers of the nineteenth century Horace Mann in the 1840s, John Dewey in the 1890s to the major philanthropies in the twentieth centurythe Carnegie, Spencer, and Ford Foundations and the Julius Rosenwald Fund (which built schools all over the South)
|
From page 11... ...
The dynamism and ferment that characterize education reform efforts in the United States have led to significant change and progress on many fronts. But the country has undergone even greater change, with the consequence that public frustration with the quality of education in the United States has been as constant as reform efforts.
|
From page 12... ...
K-12 schooling in the United States is such a vast enterprise and takes place in such diverse settings that letting "a thousand flowers bloom" in education research appeared to
|
From page 13... ...
Difficullies of Translating Research Because educational practice in the United States is controlled at the local, indeed, the classroom level, the challenge of incorporating even the strongest research findings into over a million classrooms is daunting. It is not that most people who are involved in helping children learn do not want to do a better job.
|
From page 14... ...
Can these considerable resources and energies be concentrated on the task of increasing the usefulness of research for policy makers, administrators, teachers, and others who have responsibility for the nation's schools? To explore this challenge, in 1996 the National Research Council, the working arm of the National Academy of Sciences, convened a committee of 16 people broadly representative of the target communities: researchers in various fields, teachers, state- and district-level administrators, policy makers with federal and state experience, and analysts who have watched and commented on the education enterprise from some remove.
|
From page 15... ...
· Strategic research would both advance fundamental scientific understanding and serve practical needs.2 If administrators, teachers, and other educators are to become consumers of research, then the research community will have to pay far closer attention to the needs of practitioners and policy makers. Conversely, if the ultimate goal of education reform is to improve all student learning and not just in a few classes or schools, then reformers would do well to build on systematic knowledge and the scientific tradition of hypothesis testing.
|
From page 16... ...
At the same time, the research topics need to reflect issues and problems that are important to teachers, administrators, and policy makers. And, finally: · Strategic education research requires continuity.
|
From page 17... ...
At the same time, a successful Strategic Education Research Program (SERP) of the kind proposed would seek to create a durable structure linking researchers, policy makers, and practitioners.
|
From page 18... ...
Several have made outstanding contributions over the years: the Learning Research and Development Center at the University of Pittsburgh, formerly an OERI center, has been a leader in the application of cognitive science to education; the Center for Research on Evaluation, Standards, and Student Testing at the University of California at Los Angeles, a current one, has had a positive influence on testing research and policy. But with modest federal funds divided among many centers (each receiving approximately S1 million per year over a 5-year grant cycle)
|
From page 19... ...
This proposal has not yet been implemented, but its lack of reference to any of the other major reform efforts suggests that its coordination with other current efforts may be modest. It is possible to glimpse bigger possibilities in these programs important research findings, helpful dissemination activities, valuable experience in making the many components of school systems work more effectively together, and the goal of making computer technology a useful too!
|
From page 20... ...
What we do have is an idea for a vehicle, a program of use-inspired research that is strategic enough to reinforce and extend what is good in current research and reform efforts and to create a synergy among the organizations federal, state, and private that until now has been lacking. The next two chapters lay out the elements of that idea: a strategic plan for education research and its utilization.
|
Key Terms
This material may be derived from roughly machine-read images, and so is provided only to facilitate research.
More
information on Chapter Skim is available.