Transaction, competition and opposition have become imperative in higher education. In this article, I will explore where to go from here building on critical pedagogy and ideas from students-as-partners and undergraduate research. Using the course 'Environments for learning in higher education' as an empirical starting point and approaching…

This paper describes and justifies the protocol for a research project investigating regional secondary school consolidation reforms in New South Wales, Australia. The study is designed to describe the experiences of those directly involved in the transition to a consolidated school in a way that has so far eluded educational leadership…

Education research changed significantly with the passage of the Education Science Reform Act of 2002. That legislation created the Institute of Education Sciences (IES) within the U.S. Department of Education, forever changing research in education broadly writ, including school psychology. The creation of IES served many purposes, from defining…

Educational research is often criticized for its lack of impact on practice and policy. In this paper, we discuss different approaches to the application of educational research and criticize some of the existing positions for missing the point, namely that the context of interaction between researchers and practitioners is closely connected to…

This article explores philosophical and theoretical frameworks that are useful for the conduct of research with people with disabilities. It then uses these frameworks as a basis for discussion of research practices, with a specific focus on differences that occur because of specific impairments and various cultural meanings of disability. The…

This article describes how to design program assessment for mathematics departments, in two-year and four-year colleges across the Midwest, based on a set of components that was generated from a Delphi survey. An example is provided to illustrate how this was done at a small four-year college. There is an alignment between these components and a…

When it comes to the role of research in shaping public policy and debate, one might reasonably argue that this is the best of times. No Child Left Behind (NCLB), with its frequent mention of evidence-based decision making, has underscored the role that objective knowledge should play in a democratic society. The Institute of Education Sciences,…

The "Value-Added School Review (VSR)" is an analytical model designed to assist schools in identifying and addressing opportunities for school improvement. The model works best when it is focused purposefully on students and the student learning outcomes as defined in the "Guide to Education". It complements the processes…

The last major review of the achievement outcomes of comprehensive school reform (CSR) models was conducted in 2003. Despite the growing evidence base supporting CSR, the program was discontinued by the federal government in 2007. Now, six years after the 2003 meta-analysis, the study's lead author, Geoffrey Borman, revisits the results and…

In an attempt to move, if not balance, the scales of activity toward increasing scientific capability across a diverse national population, U.S. federal funding agencies are purposefully linking research funding to broad national impact. Among United States federal agencies, the National Science Foundation (NSF) has led the way in the integration…

This article provides an overview of research in the Learning Sciences from a Design Research perspective, as it has been framed in Singapore by the National Institute of Education (NIE). The initial research agenda is considered in the light of challenges and the subsequent re-casting of objectives, based on the working out of a tripartite…

Mr. Hartman is an honors-level and Advanced Placement science teacher in a diverse, urban high school where he has been teaching for the last 20 years. In recent years, Mr. Hartman has become increasingly more concerned with the lack of ethnic/cultural diversity in his advanced science classes. On the other hand, Mrs. Rodriguez is a principal in a…

Introduces an new approach for measuring the impact of whole school reforms. The approach, based on "short" interrupted time-series analysis, is explained, its statistical procedures are outlined, and how it was used in the evaluation of a major whole-school reform, Accelerated Schools is described (H. Bloom and others, 2001). (SLD)

In consultation with experts in the fields of education research and whole school improvement, researchers at the Comprehensive School Reform Quality (CSRQ) Center created a framework for evaluating the scientific rigor of research studies that report on the efficacy of whole school improvement models. In this paper, the authors begin with a brief…

The central idea of evidence-based education--that education policy and practice ought to be fashioned based on what is known from rigorous research--offers a compelling way to approach reform efforts. Recent federal trends reflect a growing enthusiasm for such change. Most visibly, the 2002 No Child Left Behind Act requires that…