Evidence-informed change (EIC) has gained attention recently because it is seen as a lever to enhance the effectiveness and sustainability of educational change. Important questions are: how is EIC conceptualized, what counts as evidence, and what factors can support EIC in practice? Because of the complexity of EIC, we aimed to understand these…

Since the 1990s, there has been a growing demand for evidence-based education policy and practice. This demand stems from concerns that education systems are not meeting the needs of a changing world and that education research lacks rigor. While this demand aims to improve the quality of education, silos between different actors often hinder how…

Leadership, coupled with learning, is an ongoing process in which everyone has a participatory role in school or district change efforts. Providing a useful antidote to the plethora of packaged curriculum and external professional development providers, this book focuses on reclaiming agency, advocacy, and inquiry for leaders and teachers in the…

Advancing equity is a major challenge facing education systems globally. This creates an imperative for researchers to work with policymakers and practitioners to affect change. There have been many attempts to do this using various forms of action-oriented research and a considerable body of knowledge exists about their strengths and limitations.…

Despite substantial evidence of the effectiveness of--and the need for--culturally relevant education (CRE), it has been treated by many schools as a professional choice or new initiative rather than a fundamental approach to teaching in a multicultural, democratic society. Moreover, efforts to implement CRE across schools and districts have…

Throughout the last 30 years, many European countries have 'modernized' their governance of education. For the Central European school systems of Austria and the German Bundesländer it has been claimed that this 'modernization' was characterised by a sequence of reform 'waves' which culminated in introducing 'evidence-based governance' models…

Building bridges among education stakeholders is an important but underused strategy for creating a culture in which professional learning is seen as a shared responsibility. The National Center for School-University Partnerships, headquartered at the University of Mississippi, has embraced improvement science as a core strategy in its…

Part of the reason many districts fail to achieve the promise of high-quality professional learning is that they operate with what the authors call a "PD mindset." This mindset manifests in sporadic, one-time events, inservice sessions, guest speakers, webinars, and workshops that are not part of a larger plan or vision. The authors…

We sought to identify which aspects of our professional development program, the Consortium for the Advancement of Undergraduate STEM Education (CAUSE), were most useful for the participants. CAUSE was designed to support STEM faculty as they implement evidence-based teaching practices. We interviewed six faculty participants (Fellows) to address…

A theory of change is a prediction about desired outcomes and the actions that may prompt them. Research on educational change suggests that explicit theories of change are essential for effectively engaging in academic change work. While many centers for teaching and learning (CTL) express aims around organizational change, a recent study was not…

This article explores the conditions required for preschool managers to support change through research aimed at developing educational practice. It examines factors that enable and constrain support of change and the arrangements that can be identified in relation to these factors. The results suggest that arrangements that support a more…

Purpose: To advocate educational improvement science (EIS) as an emerging transdisciplinary field, I reflect on the three major pathways of educational advancement in human history, discern the misuses and pitfalls of reform, and theorize how education can be improved to better serve its mission. Design/Approach/Methods: Employing a…

With disruptions such as the Fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR) and crises such as the COVID-19 pandemic drastically changing our lives and challenging all nations to rethink our current paradigms of teaching and learning and paradigms of living and working, the world needs to educate our young to be future-ready in more deliberate ways.…

We are at a pivotal time in our country. As reading achievement declines pre-and post-COVID-19, large portions of our nation's students continue to be underserved by our education system while many teachers do not have needed support to provide evidence-based literacy instruction (NAEP, 2024). In this white paper, the Collaborative for Academic,…

Success for All (SFA) is a school improvement project promoted by the team of Professor Robert Slavin of Johns Hopkins University. This paper reviewed the development process of SFA and analyzed its characteristics. By comparing with China's "New Basic Education" project, we summarized the reference value of SFA for China, and further…