A chasm is growing between our rapidly rising aspirations for our educational systems and what schools can routinely accomplish. Education needs an improvement paradigm--one that recognizes the complexity of the work of education and the wide variability in outcomes that our systems currently produce. This article sketches out such a paradigm. It…

Methods for integrating isolated facts determined by research into applicable solutions to practical problems are described. (JD)

The evidence-based practice (EBP) movement has the potential to significantly advance the quality of psychological and educational services provided by psychologists working in schools. Training psychologists in EBP has challenged the profession and caused faculty in graduate programs to reevaluate and retool professional training curricula and…

Action research involves researchers and practitioners in collaborative projects and provides a means of integrating evaluation into the reform process. (Contains 1 table and 2 figures.)

The Lindeman Center for Community Empowerment at Northern Illinois University is seeking to relate its resources to the "invisible poor." The Center works with minority and other poor communities and groups in Chicago to strengthen and support them in their self-help efforts. One of the tools for empowerment that the Center is using is…

This document is the final report of the Interactive Research and Development on Teaching (IR&DT) study on the implementation of educational research in actual site locations. Two teams of teachers, researchers, and trainer/developers spent fifteen-and-one-half months implementing the IR&DT at two sites in Vermont and California. Their…

Examines the role of research in assisting library managers to operate libraries more effectively. Strategies for research and for library managers to better create and use research are suggested; conceptual and practical issues that affect research utilization are discussed; and the need for improved efforts by both library managers and…

Although considered by most scholars as minor research, descriptive studies can make important contributions toward the development of simulation game research. Descriptive research studies are often simply case studies of the experiences of persons who have field tested, observed, or participated in a simulation game exercise. This kind of…

As part of an effort to facilitate local problem solving in urban public schools, the Documentation and Technical Assistance Project (DTA) is concerned with clarifying the relationship, or linkage, between research and practice. This paper describes that linkage, which includes two related components: the "definition" of some research…

The concept of a hierarchy of evidence is useful in rapid electronic searching to answer questions arising during the natural course of clinical practice. The answerable question often begins "What is the evidence that ..." and, when focused on a treatment, usually includes a population, an intervention, a comparison group, and an outcome, often…

Research, evaluation, and policy analysis are elements of inquiry whose functions, aims, purposes, intended audiences, and intended outcomes have been confused in the literature discussing how to accomplish them. Using the definition of "disciplined inquiry" provided by Cronbach and Suppes (1969), which defines disciplined inquiry as the…

Discussion of the decision-making role of the librarian covers pertinent planning activities, i.e., systematically analyzing problem, reviewing literature, gathering and analyzing data, and assessing positive aspects of implementing new knowledge so gained. Knowledge of the research process, replicating research, and assuming the responsibility of…

Findings of 79 research reports were analyzed to assess the effects of calculators on student achievement and attitudes. Except in grade four, use of calculators in concert with traditional mathematics instruction improved average students' basic skills with paper and pencil, both in working exercises and in problem solving. (MNS)

Describes research in two different domains: novices learning programing, and school pupils interpreting Cartesian graphs. Findings in each domain are discussed, but the main focus is an examination of the extent to which general principles and issues apply across both domains. Research implications for instructional design are discussed.…

In separate articles, two educators present their arguments for and against the proposition that empirically based practice, the integration of practice methods with research methods, should be taught in social work practice courses. Each also responds to the other's essay. (MSE)