James Spillane

Through this 2014 grant, MPES continued to provide doctoral students from a variety of disciplines the knowledge, expertise, and technical skills to conduct rigorous empirical research that is also usable and useful in the policy and practice worlds.

The National Center for Research in Policy and Practice developed measures and tools to document research use in schools, described the conditions under which research is used and the factors that promote or inhibit research use in schools and school districts, and identified and examined researcher practices that were associated with greater use of research. In addition, the Center engaged in leadership and outreach activities that helped school and district leaders apply study findings, in...

The purpose of this project is to assess the efficacy of The Learning Walk routine as a strategy for developing school leaders. The Learning Walk routine, developed by the Institute for Learning at the University of Pittsburgh, is a form of "walkthrough" or "learning walk" practice in which school leaders conduct brief classroom visits on a regular basis for the purpose of observing classroom instruction and providing feedback to teachers.