The National Research Center for Career and Technical Education (NRCCTE) had a unique status among federally funded research and development center in education. Its funding was authorized by the federal legislation for career and technical and administered by the Office of Vocational and Adult Education, not the Institute for Education Sciences.…

The rise of the research center has changed the landscape of U.S. research enter-prise. It has also created a number of evaluation challenges, particularly when considering strategically focused, multifaceted cooperative research centers (CRCs). The author argues that although recent CRC evaluation efforts have gone a long way toward meeting the…

In this article, the author presents an interview with Thomas F. Staley, director of the Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center at the University of Texas. This interview touches on many issues that have cropped up in his long stay at the helm of the center, where Dr. Staley juggles the demands of multiple constituencies that include scholars,…

This article clearly defines the three crucial pre-implementation principles to maximize the success of Smaller Learning Communities (SLC) in large high schools. Establishing clear understanding for the need of the SLC initiative is the first of these principles. Long term commitment to a sustained plan for relevant SLC professional learning…

As school districts move toward systemic approaches to instructional reform, they are increasingly collaborating with outside organizations in this complex work. While emerging research touts the benefits of insider-outsider collaboration, we know little about the underlying processes by which partnerships are negotiated and maintained at the…

To strengthen adult education research and theoretical study, the people's government organized a number of research organizations, all with full-time reearchers. (JOW)

The nature of research in the field of intellectual disability is discussed, categories of basic research from published articles are analyzed, and issues are identified. Strongly recommended is the establishment of a national foundation in Australia to identify research priorities and coordinate research efforts. (DB)

The background essay introducing this special issue on leadership describes potential initiatives aimed at educational leadership research and development. The research supporting the invited journal articles was conducted at two national education leadership research centers. (MLF)

The sympoisum was held to describe the roots and future plans of the Engineering Research Center's (ERC's) concept and program. The first section of this symposium compilation describes the national goals that the ERCs represent. The second section presents the point of view of the National Science Foundation on the ERCs--the concept behind them,…

This pamphlet offers a series of self-assessment guidelines and questions which college and university officials can use to help determine the extent to which they are taking the appropriate measures to reasonably protect the institution's interests, maximize the economic value of technical discoveries made by faculty, and still maintain an…

The changing role of research in curriculum development since the late 1950's is reviewed. Factors are discussed that have affected the prevailing attitudes toward research and its value, including its role in fields other than education and the mixed success with which various research and development models have met in education. Particular…

This introduction to a special issue on the work of the National Research Center on the Gifted and Talented (housed at the universities of Connecticut, Georgia, and Virginia and Yale University) stresses the center's mission as conducting research that is directly relevant to the teacher/practitioner and information dissemination aimed at…

This paper contains a mission statement and overview of the National Center for Research in Vocational Education's (NCRVE) agenda for 1993. The first part outlines the goals and programs of NCRVE's six research and development areas: the economic context of vocational education; the institutional context of vocational education; curriculum and…

The chairman of the Committee on Labs and Centers, National Council on Educational Research, policymaking body for the National Institute of Education (NIE), states that education issues cannot be separated from questions of philosophy. Shared values represent an appropriate and useful utilization of taxpayer money at NIE. (MLF)

The authors, present and recent presidents of the American Educational Research Association (AERA), discuss that organization's endorsement of federal funding for long-term, large-scale educational research and development and its insistence that current competition for funding be both fair and open. (GC)