Despite calls for evidence-based decision making, the field has a limited understanding of how educational leaders actually engage research. This study draws on a nationally representative sample of 368 district and school leaders who named pieces of research that were useful to their work. Educational leaders found frameworks and practical…

This report presents results from the second phase of a descriptive study of the Researcher-Practitioner Partnerships in Education Research program. This two-year grant program, funded by the Institute of Education Sciences (IES) at the U.S. Department of Education, supports exploratory research within a partnership context. In each funded…

Recent scholarship suggests that research use is an interactive, social phenomenon, and that brokers play important roles in facilitating the exchange of research evidence. We add to this body of literature by exploring the role of brokers in the exchange of research evidence among state education agency leaders involved in K-12 science education…

There is growing interest in research-practice partnerships (RPPs)--collaborations between researchers and practitioners formed to investigate problems of practice and solutions for improving educational outcomes. Advocates argue that such partnerships enable greater research use in decision making and address persistent issues in education.…

This study describes the activities and influence of three different types of research practice partnerships (RPPs) that shared a common focus on improving mathematics teaching and learning. The three types of RPPs were a networked improvement community (NIC), a design research partnership (DRP), and a research alliance (RA). These types differ in…

This study investigated what research district leaders find useful. It draws on evidence from interviews and surveys of central office leaders in three large urban districts in the United States. We find that although leaders did report using research as federal policies intend--to select among curricula, programs, and interventions to adopt--the…

Since its establishment in 2002, the Institute of Education Sciences (IES) at the U.S. Department of Education has funded dozens of field-initiated efficacy and scale-up studies of interventions, released multiple evaluation studies of major policy initiatives, supported rigorous studies of programs through the Regional Educational Laboratories,…