IES Blog

Institute of Education Sciences

Pinning Down the Use of Research in Education

There are plenty of great ideas to be found on Pinterest: recipes for no-bake, allergen-friendly cookies; tips for taking better photos; and suggestions for great vacation spots in Greece. Lots of teachers use Pinterest as a way to share classroom ideas and engaging lessons. But where do teachers, education leaders and decision makers turn when they need evidence-based instructional practices that may work to help struggling readers, or want to use research to address other educational challenges?

Since 2014, the National Center for Education Research (NCER) has funded two National Research and Development Centers on Knowledge Utilization in an effort to find out. They are well on their way to answering questions about how and why teachers and schools use—or do not use—research in their decision making. They are also exploring ways the research community can increase interest in and actual use of research-based practices.

We are beginning to see the first results of their efforts to answer two key questions. First, are educators and schools using education research in their decision making, and if they aren’t, why not? The second question is: If educators are not using evidence as a part of their work, what can the research community do to make it more likely they will?

The National Center for Research in Policy and Practice (NCRPP) was awarded to the University of Colorado Boulder and is led by Principal Investigator Bill Penuel (University of Colorado Boulder), and Co-Principal Investigators Derek Briggs (University of Colorado Boulder), Jon Fullerton (Harvard University), Heather Hill (Harvard University), Cynthia Coburn (Northwestern University), and Jim Spillane (Northwestern University).

NCRPP has recently released their first technical report which covers the descriptive results from their nationally-representative survey of school and district leaders. Results from the report show that school and district leaders do use research evidence for activities such as designing professional development, expanding their understanding of specific issues, or convincing others to agree with a particular point of view on an education issue. Instrumental uses of research, when district leaders apply research to guide or inform a specific decision, were most commonly reported. Overall, school and district leaders were positive about the relevance and value of research for practice. When asked to report what specific piece of research was most useful, school and district leaders named books, policy reports, and peer-reviewed journal articles. You can get more information on the center's website, http://ncrpp.org. They are also very active on Twitter.

The Center for Research Use in Education (CRUE) was awarded to the University of Delaware and is led by Principal Investigator Henry May (University of Delaware), and Co-Principal Investigator Liz Farley-Ripple (University of Delaware). This team is currently working on drafting their measures of research use, which will include a set of surveys for researchers and another set for practitioners. They are especially interested in understanding which factors contribute to deep engagement with research evidence, and how gaps in perceptions and values between researchers and practitioners may be associated with frequency of deep research use. You can learn more about the work of CRUE on their website, http://www.research4schools.org/ and follow them on Twitter

While the Centers were tasked with tapping into use of research evidence specifically, both are interested in understanding all sources of evidence that practitioners use, whether it’s from peer-reviewed research articles, the What Works Clearinghouse, a friend at another school, or even Pinterest. There is certainly a wealth of research evidence to support specific instructional practices and programs, and these two Centers will begin to provide answers to questions about how teachers and leaders are using this research.

So, it’s possible that, down the road, Pinterest will become a great place for homemade, toxic-free finger paint and evidence-based practices for improving education.

Written by Becky McGill-Wilkinson, NCER Program Officer for the Knowledge Utilization Research and Development Centers

Education at a Glance 2016: Situating Education Data in a Global Context

By Lauren Musu-Gillette

Putting educational and economic outcomes in the United States within a global context can help researchers, policy makers, and the public understand how individuals in the U.S. compare to their peers internationally.  Education at a Glance, an annual publication produced by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), provides data on the structure, finances and progress of education systems in the 35 OECD countries, including  the U.S., as well as a number of partner countries. This type of data is important to understand as our students compete in an increasingly global society.

The recently released 2016 edition of the report indicates that the U.S. is above the average on some measures, but there are others presented in the report in which the U.S. lags behind our international peers.

For instance, the share of U.S. adults with a postsecondary education remains above the OECD average. In the U.S., 45 percent of adults, ages 25-64, have at least some postsecondary education, which is 10 percentage points above the OECD average. However, this advantage is shrinking because the postsecondary enrollment in other OECD countries is increasing more rapidly than in the U.S., where enrollment rates have begun to level off.

The United States continues to be a global leader in attracting international students to attend our postsecondary institutions at the postbaccalaureate level. In 2014, international students made up only 3.5 percent of students enrolled in bachelor’s or equivalent programs, compared with 9% in master’s or equivalent programs and 35% in doctoral or equivalent programs. The U.S., along with the United Kingdom and France, attract more than half of master's and doctoral international students worldwide.

In terms of labor market outcomes, gender disparities in earnings are wider in the U.S. than the OECD average. Among adults in the U.S. with postsecondary education, women earn only 68% of what men earn. This gender gap is larger than the gap for all other OECD countries except Brazil, Chile, Israel, Mexico and the Slovak Republic. Similar gaps exist for males and females in the U.S. across all levels of education.

This is just a small slice of the information that can be found in Education at a Glance 2016. You can also find a wealth of other data on topics of perennial interest, such as the percentage of 3- and 4-year-olds enrolled in early childhood education programs; working conditions of teachers, including time spent in the classroom and salary data; and education finance and per-student expenditures. A relatively new feature is an international comparison for states and other subnational units on key education indicators.

Browse the full report to see how the U.S. compares to other countries on these important education-related topics.

Awards to Accelerate Research in Education Technology

The Institute of Education Sciences (IES), in partnership with the Small Business Administration (SBA), has made awards to two U.S.-based accelerators – organizations that provide support to technology developers and researchers in the development and launch of new innovations. They are among 68 awards made under SBA’s 2016 Growth Accelerator Fund Competition

The $50,000, one-year awards are designed to support accelerators in building the capacity of education technology small businesses to conduct research in the development and evaluation of new innovative products.

The Role of Accelerators in Education

Accelerators fill an important role in the fast-growing, education technology ecosystem by offering a “one-stop shop” for small businesses looking to advance their research and development, and commercialization processes. For example, accelerators assist with idea formation and market analysis, software development, licensing and copyright planning, networking, manufacturing, raising investment funds, and getting the products tested by schools.

However, not many education accelerators provide assistance to developers in conducting rigorous and relevant education research. Because start-ups typically do not employ or partner with education researchers, many new technologies are often not iteratively developed and refined based on feedback from students and teachers or evaluated for promise or efficacy in improving education outcomes. The lack of research-based information often leaves school practitioners without the information they need to guide decision making on whether to adopt a new intervention.

To help strengthen these areas, the U.S. Department of Education/IES partnered with SBA to create a new topic in this year’s Growth Accelerator Fund Competition—Education Technology Research. This topic called for applications from accelerators with plans to support developers in conducting education research, including research to inform concept idea development, research to test prototypes and inform refinements, and pilot studies to evaluate the promise and efficacy of fully developed technologies. Applications were reviewed by a panel of expert judges. The two awards were made to the following accelerators:

  • Virginia-based Jefferson Education, which will build a foundation for a national education researcher database to connect entrepreneurial developers to a qualified education research partners. The database will facilitate the creation of partnerships to carry out a wide range of research studies, from case studies to inform the development of a new intervention to experimentally designed studies of the education outcomes of fully developed technology interventions.
  • California-based New Schools Ignite/WestED Research Partnership, which will create a website with free resources and information on the role of different forms of research across the lifespan of a technology intervention, training and assistance in research methods, and with opportunities to conduct research in education settings. The funding will also be used develop data collection and analysis systems to help entrepreneurs understand the impact and effectiveness of the technologies housed within the accelerator.

Along with building the research capacity of developers, the awardees will disseminate information to developers about IES programs that fund research, development and evaluation, including the ED/IES Small Business Innovation Research program and the IES Research Grants Programs in Education Technology for Education and Special Education.

For more information about how IES is supporting the development of education technology, visit the IES website or follow us on Facebook and Twitter.

Persistence Pays Off: Introducing the New WWC Website

By Ruth Curran Neild, Delegated Director, IES

Stick with it, teachers tell their students.  Don’t give up when the going gets tough. Important work is often difficult. Keep at it.

More than a decade ago, it took this kind of dogged determination to launch an entity that would review education research against rigorous standards—the What Works Clearinghouse (WWC).   There were some skeptics, but also many supporters. And year after year, the WWC persisted, building out new topic areas, adding systematic reviews and practice guides, and identifying more interventions with positive effects on student outcomes.

Over time, WWC standards began to influence the field, with researchers designing studies that would meet its rigorous expectations. At the same time, researchers provided input that helped us improve WWC and its standards. Now, there are about 1,000 effectiveness studies available that meet our high bar for research design.  

By 2014, there was so much content in the WWC and so many people using the WWC website that it was time to retool our online presence and make our resources easier to find.

So IES staff and WWC contractors undertook an extensive project to create a more flexible database and intuitive search engine that meets a variety of user needs. A new relational database was built from the ground up, using study review data previously kept in thousands of different spreadsheets. Focus groups and user testing allowed us to identify the most important functionalities and best design features.

After more than two years of work, we launched the new WWC website today (Sept. 13), with a much-improved Find What Works feature that makes it easier to identify interventions, programs, and policies have improved student outcomes. (The video below can help you learn how to navigate the new site). The new WWC site has something for all types of users:

Do you want just top-level information about a program’s effects?  We can give you that.

Do you want to dig into the details of a particular study, including outcome domains, population, geographic context, and implementation?  We can give you that, too.

Do you want a quick assessment of whether a study was conducted with students like yours?  Find What Works can do that.

Do you want an easy way to compare the research on interventions?  Yes, absolutely – that’s a new feature.  

Do you want to see a list of randomized controlled trials (RCTs) that meet WWC standards and found at least one statistically significant positive effect?  No problem.

This is a proud day indeed for the What Works Clearinghouse, but there’s more to come.  We are always working on new resources for our users. In the next few months, look for a new practice guide on teaching writing in grades 6-12, as well as online WWC reviewer training, which we hope will help to meet the high demand for this credential. And we are continuing to expand our topic areas, including reviews of studies of postsecondary education programs to identify those that are showing promise for improving student outcomes.  

A lot of hard work and persistence went into this project from many people, including IES staff and the teams from Mathematica Policy Research and Sanametrix that worked on the site. I want to say “thank you” to them all. I also want to thank the many people who have been a part of the WWC over the years; including IES team members, study reviewers, and contractors. They have helped get us to this point today.  

Most of all, I want to thank the hundreds of thousands of educators, researchers, and decision makers who visit and use the WWC each year. We are glad that the What Works Clearinghouse has been a part of your work and hope it will continue to be a go-to resource for many years to come. 

 

Recognizing Our Outstanding Predoctoral Fellows

Each year, the Institute of Education Sciences (IES) recognizes an outstanding fellow from its Predoctoral Interdisciplinary Research Training Programs in the Education Sciences for academic accomplishments and contributions to education research. For the first time, IES has selected joint recipients for the 2015 award: Meghan McCormick and Eric Taylor. They will receive their awards and present their research at the annual IES Principal Investigators meeting in Washington, D.C. in December 2016.

Meghan completed her Ph.D. in Applied Psychology at New York University and wrote her dissertation on the efficacy of INSIGHTS, a social emotional learning intervention aimed at improving low-income urban students’ academic achievement. She is currently a research associate at MDRC. Eric completed his PhD in the Economics of Education from Stanford University and wrote his dissertation on the contributions of the quality and quantity of classroom instruction to student learning. Eric is currently an assistant professor at the Harvard University Graduate School of Education.

We asked Meghan and Eric how participating in an IES predoctoral training program helped their development as researchers.  For more information about the IES predoctoral training program, visit our website.

Meghan McCormick

Having the opportunity to be part of the IES Predoctoral Training Program helped me to develop a set of theoretical, quantitative, and practical skills that I would not have had the opportunity to develop otherwise. 

I was drawn to attend NYU (New York University) for my doctoral studies specifically because the school of education at NYU offered the (IES) predoctoral training program, in addition to hosting a core set of faculty with research interests very much aligned with my own. In my first year of graduate school, I quickly became aware that being a part of the IES program allowed me the freedom to study with an interdisciplinary set of scholars who could support multiple components of my training through a diverse set of experiences.

For example, in my work with Elise Cappella, Erin O’Connor, and Sandee McClowry, I was able to learn about the logistics of implementing a cluster-randomized trial across a broad set of schools, and conducting impact analyses to evaluate the efficacy of one social-emotional learning program called INSIGHTS. My experience working with Jim Kemple and Lori Nathanson at the Research Alliance for New York City schools showed me how to use research in a way that was responsive to the needs and goals of education policy makers. Quantitative coursework with Jennifer Hill and Sharon Weinberg helped me to apply rigorous quantitative methods to the data that were collected in schools, and to think concretely about the implications of research design for my future work. Coursework with developmental psychologists conducting policy-relevant research, such as Pamela Morris and Larry Aber, helped me to apply comprehensive theoretical framing when examining research questions of interest, and interpreting results. In addition, I have always been primarily interested in conducting interdisciplinary research that is responsive to policy and practice. My dissertation research grew out of my interest in learning about interdisciplinary methods for causal inference and applying them to research questions I had about how, for whom, and under what circumstances the social-emotional learning program I helped to evaluate effected outcomes for low-income students.

Most importantly, perhaps, having been part of the IES program’s collaborative and interdisciplinary community helped me to identify the type of research I wanted to do after finishing graduate school. Primarily, I knew that I wanted to conduct policy-relevant research, using the most rigorous quantitative methods available, with a team of researchers coming from different backgrounds. This realization led me to work at MDRC, where I have been working with JoAnn Hsueh and other colleagues to apply my skills from the predoctoral training program in new research design work that is responsive to critical policy questions in early education policy and practice right now. I feel prepared for this new work given the opportunities that the IES program afforded me across the last five years. 

Eric Taylor

I would emphasize two benefits. First, the IES program at Stanford helped me create and strengthen professional relationships with other education researchers and practitioners. Those relationships provided important opportunities to learn skills in ways that could not happen in the classroom but also complemented the excellent classroom instruction. The new relationships were diverse: other graduate students in different disciplines, Stanford faculty and faculty at other institutions, and, critically, practitioners and policy makers. For example, supported by my fellowship, I joined faculty at (the University of) Michigan and Columbia (University) working with the DC Public Schools to improve teacher applicant screening and hiring.

Second, those relationships combined with the financial support of the fellowship made it possible to work on new and timely research projects. During my time as an IES predoc, with collaborators at Brown, we started a researcher-practitioner partnership with colleges at the Tennessee Department of Education. The resulting work has taught me much about the day-to-day realities of school policy making and management, and how research can and cannot help. The partnership with Tennessee also grew into a five-year grant from IES, which began last year, to study state policy and teacher development through evaluation.

In short, I am certain my career is much further along today than it would have been without the IES predoc fellowship.

By Katina Stapleton, Education Research Analyst, National Center for Education Research