The Role of Relevance in Education Research, as Viewed by Former Presidents

Abstract

American Educational Research Association presidents’ presidential addresses have only intermittently considered relevance as a criterion of quality for education research. A few, though, argued that education research could only distinguish itself from research in the disciplines through attention to improving educational outcomes. David Krathwohl (1969) called for a coherent community encompassing practitioners, policymakers, and researchers. Philip Jackson (1990) urged that local research knowledge, rather than research-based dictates, be communicated. Alan Schoenfeld (1999) challenged education researchers simultaneously to build knowledge and offer solutions to practical problems. He anticipated current research-practice partnerships and shifts toward practice-embedded research supports. But only if the larger education research enterprise supports these efforts will the shift be radical and robust enough to persist and survive.

A review of practitioner-led evaluation of teacher professional development

“…Within this model, existing empirical, positivist/post-positivist research methods are leveraged in new ways to provide more practically useful information at an earlier stage. More broadly, there have long been calls for the identification of educational research priorities to be based on practical needs rather than gaps in theoretical literature (Kennedy, 1997;James, 2012;Sleeter, 2014;Snow, 2015Snow, , 2016. The evaluation-and, ultimately, the quality and impact-of teacher professional development by practitioners could be significantly improved if such shifts were to occur.…”

Directed Consultation and Supported Professionalism: Promoting Adaptive Evidence-Based Practices in Rural Schools

“…Historically, the relevance of research for practitioners has been a critical but somewhat elusive focus for educational scientists (Snow, 2016). Efforts to create linkages between basic and applied research include such concepts as implementation science, bridging the research-to-practice gap, translational research, evidence into practice, and improvement science (Bryk, 2015;Donovan, Snow, & Daro, 2013;Greenwood & Abbott, 2001).…”

Introduction

“…In addition to using multiple research methods to understand how education programs work in specific contexts, recent scholarship, including the articles and commentaries in this special issue, demonstrates the importance of involving the communities that we serve as knowledge producers and collaborators in the research (e.g., Gutiérrez & Penuel, 2014;Snow, 2016). This scholarship speaks directly to AERA's mission ''to promote the use of research to improve education and serve the common good'' (http://www.aera.net/ About-AERA).…”

“…Although AERA has long emphasized using research to improve education, ideas about how that might best be achieved are not necessarily shared (Cuban, 2016). Scholars are increasingly seeking to understand how partnerships between researchers and practitioners can generate projects that are relevant to and have the potential to improve education practice (Coburn & Penuel, 2016; Gutiérrez & Penuel, 2014; Snow, 2016).…”