A r c h i v e d  I n f o r m a t i o n

III. Implications for Educational Research Planning

The dozen or more educational research planning efforts reviewed by the conference were of varying scope and duration. Some were taking on one major area of study. Some were concerned with directing or strengthening systems for the production and utilization of knowledge. Some were starting, some were in midcourse, and some were completed and fully implemented. Whatever their status, they had shared notions of the essentials of educational research planning:

1. The overriding sense of the conference was that educational research planning must, sooner rather than later, emphasize focus and selectivity. Its inquiries should be concentrated on those areas that the public and profession believe are important as well as those that will become important. The touchstone issue must be student learning, with a particular but by no means exclusive emphasis on the challenges presented by ever-growing diversity and inequality. Selection of specific areas of inquiry must proceed from assessment of what is known and not known, and of what research opportunities are presented. Criteria for selection must be clear enough to build strategies consisting of related projects executed over time, and sometimes to exclude or redirect worthy but not strategically-significant proposals. Otherwise, as experience has shown, academic log-rolling will likely prevail. Candidates for the short list of research priorities seemed rather obvious: continued focus on reading and language learning; expanded attention to mathematics; the dynamics of teacher performance and effectiveness in schools and classrooms; and new emphasis on technology and telecommunications, international studies, and learning in family, community, and workplace settings.

   The elements of successful research planning strategies are already present in many of the existing efforts represented at the conference, such as NICHD in reading, the Office of Naval Research (ONR) in cognitive-based training activities, and the several National Research Council (NRC) initiatives. And these elements should as well characterize the more broadly conceived or newly launched efforts of the Council of Scientific Society Presidents (CSSP), the National Academy of Education (NAE), the American Educational Research Association (AERA), and others.

   Once the problems of the field are clearly specified, research plans should set forth an extended array of basic and applied work, theory building, investigations in clinical and field settings, surveys and case studies of field experiences, and syntheses of completed studies. The result will be programs of study that gain the respect of the scientific, professional and policy communities, and thereby guarantee substantial resources now and in the future.

2. Hand-in-hand with this focus and strategy must come emphasis on more rigorous methods and designs, with particular attention to:
   • rethinking, reimagining the possibilities of experimental field trials given new technical tools, the complexity of the puzzles we seek to unravel, and the persuasive power of randomized trials with policymakers and the public;

   • designing processes ("engineering") that systematically apply insights of research to the development of discrete education programs; and

   • creating a universe of reliable syntheses of all-important areas of educational research.

3. Another necessary element of successful planning will be thorough going peer participation and review, with "peer" denoting both the relevant community of scholars (operating in study sections or other continuous deliberative bodies) and professionals from the field (teachers especially), participating fully in priority-setting and project selection, in the design and execution of collaborative research and in discussions about the significance and implementation of results. Researchers and professionals must develop a better understanding of their mutual responsibilities in performing research and moving it into practice, indeed a mutual understanding about when research-based knowledge is "good enough" to inform practice and policy.

4. Undergirding any successful research planning program must be two essential supporting activities:
   • perennial attention to the capacity of the education research system: its human resources, and its institutions and financial resourcesan inventory and descriptive analysis of the system would be a good first step; and

   • an entirely new approach to communications, taking the word on educational research to the profession, the public, and the policy world.

   The conference's review of educational planning and related activities suggested the shape of a new, or at least redefined, role for NERPPB and OERI, and its research centers, regional laboratories, and other assets:

   • convening periodic meetings on educational research planning and on such underlying issues as standards of evidence and methodological progress, since there are no naturally-occurring forums for such discussions which transcend specific missions and agendas;

   • encouraging and coordinating communications strategies, to place the accomplishments, promise and challenges of educational research before its professional and public audiences;

   • monitoring the educational research system, and building human and institutional resources;

   • instigating syntheses of all important fields of educational research, to sum up progress continually and draw implications for policy and practice; and

   • building linkages between research endeavors and teachers in the field, through consultations, network building, professional training programs, translation of research findings into program designs and promising implications for the organization of instruction.

   The agencies should, in other words, inhabit the space between the research community, the political community, and the world of practice, and help all agencies, associations, institutions, and individuals involved in educational research and improvement to add more value to their own work and to the joint endeavor of learning. The goal can be clearly stated: in the future, we must be able to count on educational progress that is based on ideas that have been validated by well-designed, well-executed research, and translated into success by well-qualified professionals.

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[II. Summary of the Proceedings]

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