How School and District Leaders Access, Perceive, and Use Research

Penuel, William R.; Briggs, Derek C.; Davidson, Kristen L.; Herlihy, Corinne; Sherer, David; Hill, Heather C.; Farrell, Caitlin C.; Allen, Anna‐Ruth

doi:10.1177/2332858417705370

Cited by 82 publications

(147 citation statements)

References 49 publications

(65 reference statements)

Supporting

Mentioning

137

Contrasting

Unclassified

Order By: Relevance

“…Neither policy‐makers nor practitioners in education actually use much external research evidence (Mahoney, 2013; Procter, 2013; Galway & Sheppard, 2015). Policy‐makers and practitioners in education may say that they want and use good evidence (Penuel et al , 2017), but few teachers incorporate evidence‐led practices into their lesson plans or guidance for pupils. According to Wexler (2019), part of the fault lies with teacher training programmes in the US, because their lecturers are unaware of the best available evidence.…”

Section: The Possible Barriers To Evidence‐usementioning

confidence: 99%

What is the evidence on the best way to get evidence into use in education?

Gorard

See

Siddiqui

2020

Review of Education

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

For decades there have been calls by concerned stakeholders to improve the quality of education research, and some progress has been made towards creating a more secure evidence base in some areas. More programmes and approaches that have a reasonable evidence base are now also being used in schools (but not in policy, and not necessarily because they have a reasonable evidence base). However, there has been no equivalent improvement in secure knowledge about how best to get that evidence into use, or even what difference it makes when such evidence is used. This paper looks at what little is already known about the different ways to get research evidence into use in education by summarising the results of a large-scale review of the literature. A total of 323 of the most relevant studies were looked at across all areas of public policy, and judged for quality and contribution. Very few (33) were of the appropriate design and quality needed to make robust causal claims about evidence-intouse, and even fewer of these concerned education. This means that despite over 20 years of modest improvement in research on what works in education policy and practice, the evidence on how best to deploy these findings is still very weak. We consider studies in terms of several issues, including whether they look at changes in user knowledge and behaviour, or student outcomes, and how evidence is best modified before use. Providing access to raw research evidence or even slightly simplified evidence is not generally an effective way of getting it used, even if that evidence is presented to users by knowledge-brokers, in short courses or similar. What is more likely to work for both policy and practice is the engineering of high quality evidence into a more usable format and presenting it actively or iteratively via a respected and trusted conduit, or through population measures such as legislation. Having the users actually do the research is another promising approach. Expecting each individual study they fund to have an impact is not the way forward, as this may encourage widespread use of ineffective or even harmful interventions. Publicly-funded users, including policy-makers, should be required to use evidence-led programmes from those libraries providing them and which are appropriate and relevant to their aims. Research funders should support these approaches, and help to build up libraries of successfully tested programmes. Researchers need to be scrupulous, looking at their new evidence in the context of what is already known and not looking to obtain 'impact' from single studies. More and better research is needed on the best routes for evidence-into-use. However, the improvements required of all parties are as much ethical in nature as they are technical or scientific.Keywords use of evidence, engineering of evidence, translation of evidence, research impact, knowledge transfer, robust evidence.

show abstract

Section: The Possible Barriers To Evidence‐usementioning

confidence: 99%

What is the evidence on the best way to get evidence into use in education?

Gorard

See

Siddiqui

2020

Review of Education

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…The PD resources are similarly received although they tend to be strongly adapted to fit local contexts of professional learning in which they are used. Using the analytical framework from Weiss and Bucuvalas (1980) used by Penuel et al (2017), we have documented instrumental uses (in service of a decision or design), conceptual uses (to change a person's perspective on the situation), and symbolic uses (in order to validate a preference or justify a decision) of our resources. We believe all three uses serve important functions in the work of improvement and transformation.…”

Section: Guest Editorialmentioning

confidence: 99%

Infrastructuring Teacher Learning about Equitable Science Instruction

Bell

2019

Journal of Science Teacher Education

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

“…Many of those who have wrestled with this question appear to operate from the stance that this relationship should be direct and that communication between research and practice should be improved. Indeed, there is little doubt that educators’ direct use of research has been limited (Burkhardt & Schoenfeld, ; McIntyre, ), though recent research suggests this is changing (Penuel et al ., ). While educational researchers express frustration that their findings are rarely used to inform practice (Pieters & De Vries, ), educators doubt the accessibility, clarity and usefulness of scientific research (Broekkamp & Van Hout‐Wolters, ).…”

Section: Knowledge Production and Sharingmentioning

confidence: 97%

How can educational research support practice at scale? Attending to educational designer needs

McKenney

Schunn

2018

British Educational Res J

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Curricula, assessments and teacher professional development programmes wield a powerful influence on teaching and learning enactment. Together with the interpretation of those using them, these products mediate the flow of ideas from research to practice. In most countries, those curricula, assessments and professional development programmes that become widely used are created by educational designers. Given their crucial function, it is surprising that the role of educational designers is rarely recognised in the educational research literature, studied empirically or supported in practice. This article argues that educational research stands to (better) support practice at scale when it is attuned to the needs of educational designers. First, mechanisms for knowledge production and use are discussed, including the linkage role played by educational designers in the educational infrastructure of most countries. Then, the importance of understanding and bolstering the linkage between research findings and the work of designers is discussed. Arguments are given for research to better support those who design for scale, along with sample research questions posed by educational designers. In these, a distinction is made between the knowledge designers crave to shape their products (curricula, assessments, teacher professional development) and the knowledge they need to shape the processes through which those products come to fruition. This article closes with a call for educational researchers to explicitly focus their knowledge creation and dissemination efforts towards research consumers with the largest direct effects on teaching and learning: educational designers.

show abstract

How School and District Leaders Access, Perceive, and Use Research

Cited by 82 publications

References 49 publications

What is the evidence on the best way to get evidence into use in education?

What is the evidence on the best way to get evidence into use in education?

Infrastructuring Teacher Learning about Equitable Science Instruction

How can educational research support practice at scale? Attending to educational designer needs

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About