Response to Bridging the Research-to-Practice Gap

Doug Carnine's position of Bridging the Research-to-Practice Gap is both classic and timely. It is classic because the skepticism that separates researchers and practitioners has long been on the conscience of the "best minds" in education. The American Educational Research Association (AERA) established an annual award "Relating Research to Practice" starting in 1903. There was at least 1 year when a quality recipient could not be identified. It is timely because the best minds still espouse the cause but have produced nominal results. Even today the AERA with its 23,000 researcher membership is wrestling with its need to "make research results more accessible to target audiences including school leaders and classroom practitioners" (Educational Researcher, 1994). In June 1993 the Outreach Committee was established to design and implement a program of meaningful interactions among the AERA membership and policymakers, the education press, and school practitioners. The American Federation of Teachers' (AFT) attempt to bridge the gap between research and practice was inspired by AFT President Albert Shanker's (The New York Times, 1979) longheld belief that: If teaching is to become a full profession, teachers must know something and have an expertise in something that nonreachers generally don't have. Professionalization will result from tire recognition that teachers, like doctors, lawyers . base their actions and judgment not on style, whim, opinion or bureaucratic rules, but on a substantial base acquired through intensive and continuing study. Believing that useful educational research information has indeed been generated, AFT attempted to bridge the gap between research and practice by delivering the research directly to teachers. This program won the first AERA Award for "Relating Research to Practice. " The complex process for research delivery in the Educational Research and Development (ER&D) program involved: * Identifying credible research on topics important to classroom teachers. * Presenting research in "translations" that did not alter original findings, oversimplify important concepts, or misrepresent the intent of the research by adding unproven ideas. * Designing a training-of-trainers model (based on the teacher center model) to disseminate the research to classroom teachers. * Developing collaborative relationships among teachers, colleges and universities, and the research community. Another major emphasis of ER&D was on identifying useable research based on: * Perceived need by practitioners. * Practical application. * Consistent findings. * Observation-based data. * Time-tested results. * "Translatable" studies. * Generic scope. ER&D now includes research on instructional strategies in the content areas and in special needs categories, such as special education. What AFT has learned in over 16 years of program implementation and expansion dovetails with much of what Carnine puts forth in his suggestions for improving the trustworthiness, useability, and accessibility of research. Teachers who have participated in the ER&D program become informed decision makers about their practice because they: * Have research savvy. * Know what questions to ask. * Refer to research as a sound knowledge base from which to function. * Contribute their own ideas about ways in which the research does or does not make sense in the classroom. * Engage in dialogue with researchers. * Communicate with each other. * Make real change in practice (not cosmetic adjustments). If these qualities sound familiar, it is because they represent a cross-section or compilation of the issues brought forth in the Carnine article. …