Experimental studies have a considerable impact on the educational policies and practices of many countries. In Turkey, policymakers are planning to initiate a STEM education reform in K-12 schools based on experimental studies. However, the methodological flaws in these studies may lead to biased outcomes and may mislead the STEM education…

Calls to improve relationships between research and practice abound, among them efforts to help researchers to work in partnership with and communicate more effectively with policy and practice audiences, informing those that govern and design educational policies and those charged with implementation in schools and classrooms, respectively. These…

Although International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement-pioneered international large-scale assessment (ILSA) of education is now a well-established science, non-practitioners and many users often substantially misunderstand how large-scale assessments are conducted, what questions and challenges they are designed to…

In October 2014, The National Center for Education Research (NCER) and the National Center for Special Education Research (NCSER), in the Institute of Education Sciences (IES) at the U.S. Department of Education, convened a Technical Working Group (TWG). The purpose of this TWG meeting was to discuss critical education problems and issues on which…

Scholarly analysis in the sociology of education has burgeoned in recent decades. "Frontiers in Sociology of Education" aims to provide a roadmap for sociologists and other social scientists as they set bold new directions for future research on schools. In Part 1 of this forward-looking volume, the authors present cutting-edge research…

This report describes a technique for establishing relative priorities among policy issues that have been systematically identified in and extracted from written documents. The method involves assigning values to five factors that affect an issue's priority. These factors are: uncertainty, or the degree to which information is lacking; imminence,…

This report describes the technical aspects of the establishment of a "Fast Response Survey System" for the state of Washington. The system, supported by the Stuart Foundation and the newly created Center for Strengthening the Teaching Profession (CSTP), is being designed to offer timely and useful information to the state's policy community…

The computer revolution has contributed greatly to the increased use of Geographic Information Systems (GIS) technology, and GIS is now being used to inform education policy. This paper introduces the technology of GIS to education researchers and policy analysts and illustrates its use with some recent research on charter schools. Its potential…

Examines the state of cost-benefit and cost-effectiveness analysis in education, first examining the progress that has been made in these fields in the health and medical sectors. Explores one outstanding example of cost-benefit analysis and critiques four other educational evaluations. Synthesizes strengths of cost-effectiveness analysis in…

This paper was presented as part of a symposium exploring different philosophical and technical perspectives and implications of implementation research. Some basic differences between the structured and unstructured approach to implementation as portrayed in the literature are described. Next, the assumptions and assessment techniques of the…

The Schools and Staffing Survey (SASS) and the Teacher Followup Survey (TFS) have been administered by the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) in 1987-88, 1990-92, and 1993-95. The SASS is a large-scale survey of educational institutions in the United States. The TFS is conducted the year following the SASS to obtain more information…

Proposes a research model that emphasizes policy concerns throughout the problem formulation, data collection, and interpretation processes. Describes the model's germinal study, its characteristics (assumption of complexity, maximization of causal inquiry, usefulness for policy makers), and its relationship to public policy making and other forms…

Addresses tensions over what kind of research best serves teacher education, showing how formal conceptions of large scale social science research might be compatibly situated within a larger frame of research that also recognizes certain varieties of interpretive and narrative research and arguing that the policy making enterprise may justifiably…

Ethnographers have traditionally encountered problems in conducting qualitative research in elite settings. The powerful, in this case, the administrative and political elite in the United Kingdom, have considerable constitutional, legal, and cultural resources that enable them to deflect or channel any research in which they are the objects of…

This paper explains that despite the long debate over the relative value of quantitative and qualitative educational research and attempts to talk across disciplines, quantitative research dominates educational policy circles. As a result, quality qualitative research may not enter into educational policy conversations. The paper discusses whether…