Toward a District Infrastructure to Support Instructional Improvement in Pre-K-3 Mathematics

2025-01-01

Research Hidden in Plain Sight: Theorizing Latent Use as a Form of Research Use

American Educational Research Journal · 2024-04-28 · 3 citations

Calls for evidence-based practice are pervasive. In response, extensive scholarship has employed four categories of research use—instrumental, symbolic, conceptual, and imposed—to examine how research is used in schools and districts. We draw on sociocultural learning theory and empirical data from one school district to newly theorize latent use as another category of research use. We define latent use as when educators participate with a research-embedded tool in ways that guide their work practice. We call this “latent” use because educators use research via their participation with tools embedded with research quotes, citations, and/or summaries rather than directly engaging with traditional research products (e.g., journal articles). We then discuss latent use's potential merits and limitations.

Correction to: Cascading webs of interdependence: Examining how and when coordinated change happens in a district central office partnership

Journal of Educational Change · 2023-03-25

Cascading webs of interdependence: Examining how and when coordinated change happens in a district central office partnership

Journal of Educational Change · 2023-01-30 · 2 citations

Understanding Kindergarten Readiness

The Elementary School Journal · 2022-10-28 · 6 citations

Learning at the Boundaries of Research and Practice: A Framework for Understanding Research–Practice Partnerships

Educational Researcher · 2022 · 150 citations

• Sociology
• Knowledge management
• Computer Science

Given the rapid growth of research–practice partnerships (RPPs), we need a framework that helps the field understand how RPPs can facilitate organizational learning in service of local educational improvement and transformation. Drawing on sociocultural and organizational learning theories, we argue that learning can happen for the organizations engaged in RPPs at the boundaries of research and practice. Such learning is evident when there are changes in collective knowledge, policies, and routines of participating organizations, with implications for longer-term outcomes of educational improvement and transformation locally and more broadly. The degree to which organizations can make use of the ideas from the RPP is dependent, in part, on the presence and design of boundary infrastructure and the preexisting organizational capacities and conditions. We conclude with implications for those engaging in RPPs and future research.

Solving for X: Constructing Algebra and Algebra Policy During a Time of Change

Sociology of Education · 2022 · 20 citations

• Political Science
• Sociology
• Mathematics education

The year students take Algebra I historically determines how far they progress in secondary mathematics, creating complex equity issues around access to this course. By examining a case study of one large, urban school district adjusting to the Common Core State Standards in Mathematics (CCSS-M), we demonstrate how district leaders’ interactions, in combination with their organizational and institutional environments, led to an overhaul of the secondary mathematics course pathway, ending in detracked middle school mathematics. We find that district leaders’ deliberations of mathematics policy were constrained by organizational concerns around pedagogy, equity, logistics, and politics. In other words, the disruption created by the CCSS-M was limited by extant organizational priorities. This study has potential implications for theorizing disruptions and for better understanding equity-oriented mathematics policy and practice.

School leaders' use of research: viewing research use in decision making through an organizational lens

Elsevier eBooks · 2022-11-18

Instructional Policy From Pre-K to Third Grade: The Challenges of Fostering Alignment and Continuity in Two School Districts

Educational Policy · 2021-11-15 · 16 citations

In an effort to improve learning for young children and respond to preschool fade out, some districts are working on “PreK-3” initiatives to create better connected learning pathways for children. In these pathways, primary grades continue to build on what children learn in preschool; they also present potential implementation challenges that are not accounted for in the literature. Using conceptual tools from institutional theory and empirical evidence from a study of two school districts, we show how challenges arise as districts try to bridge the divergent and entrenched institutional systems of preschool and elementary. Our findings suggest that these systems are each held in place by their own set of regulative, normative, and cultural-cognitive mechanisms that reinforce one another thereby providing an explanation for why beliefs and practices are so resistant to change. This analysis also points to practical implications that may lead to better connections and learning experiences for young children.

Fostering educational improvement with research-practice partnerships

Phi Delta Kappan · 2021 · 99 citations

• Sociology
• Computer Science
• Sociology

Research-practice partnerships (RPPs) provide opportunities for researchers to support school districts in addressing the complex challenges they face. Cynthia E. Coburn, William R. Penuel, and Caitlin C. Farrell situate RPPs in the history of educational research and discuss the needs they were designed to address. They then describe what contemporary RPPs are and what they do and close by discussing ways that RPPs can contribute to educational improvement and transformation.