Democratizing Educational Innovation and Improvement: The Policy Contexts of Improvement Research in Education

Item

Title

Democratizing Educational Innovation and Improvement: The Policy Contexts of Improvement Research in Education

Abstract/Description

The aim of this essay is to advance understandings of current efforts to democratize disciplined approaches to educational innovation and improvement in the US and other countries, with a specific focus on the macro-level policy contexts of improvement research in education. In the US, earlier analyses examined these policy contexts from a contemporary perspective, with an emergent improvement movement in tension with an institutionalized evidence movement. By contrast, this essay provides an historical perspective through a “geological analysis” of US education reform. This analysis has the improvement movement atop macro-level policy contexts that are layers-deep, and as potentially integral to a public education enterprise that has been evolving for centuries: at the policy level, from resource-forward to practice-forward innovation and improvement; at the local level, from school systems to education systems to learning systems. This analytic approach and framework suggest the need for a new discourse about efforts to democratize disciplined approaches to educational innovation and improvement in the US, as well as possibilities for comparative and international research examining parallel developments in other countries. This essay was prepared as a contribution to The Foundational Handbook on Improvement Research in Education.

Author/creator

Peurach, Donald J.

Foster, Anna T.

Lyle, Angela

Seeber, Emily R.

Date

August 2021

In publication

CPRE Working Papers

Publisher

Consortium for Policy Research in Education (CPRE)

Resource type

Research/Scholarly Media

Resource status/form

en Published Text

Scholarship genre

en Theoretical

en Historical

en Synthesis/Overview

Keywords

innovation

improvement

policy

research

knowledge production

knowledge use

systems

mass schooling

markets

infrastructure

evidence

practice

resource-forward

practice-forward

IRE Approach/Concept

Infrastructure

Policy

Education Reform

Instructional Improvement

Democracy

Epistemic Community/Socialized Knowledge Community (SKC)

Use of Research Evidence (URE)

Knowledge Use

Research Development Dissemination Utilization (RDDU) Logic

Equity

Primary national context

United States

Open access/full-text available

en Yes

URL

Working Paper Webpage

Open Access Working Paper PDF

Grant funding

Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching

Alternate version

Democratizing Educational Innovation and Improvement: The Policy Contexts of Improvement Research in Education

Other related resources/entities

The Policy Context of United States Educational Innovation and Improvement

The Foundational Handbook on Improvement Research in Education

Education Resources Information Center (ERIC)

Institute of Education Sciences (IES)

Citation

Peurach, D. J., Foster, A. T., Lyle, A., & Seeber, E. (2021). Democratizing Educational Innovation and Improvement: The Policy Contexts of Improvement Research in Education. CPRE Working Papers. https://repository.upenn.edu/cpre_workingpapers/27

Item sets

Open Access Resource (IRE)

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