Important decisions are made daily about how to structure schools and teach students. Using research to make informed decisions is a key part of the school improvement process. Both teachers and researchers have to make their own judgments about what they are going to work on, what approaches they will try, and what they will do with the findings. They must also be willing to share their results with others.
Research offers opportunities to compare competing ideas.
Indeed, building on what has been thought of and done before can help develop better ideas for the future. A Question of Utility Too often, however, teachers keep their experiences and findings to themselves. Researchers, at the same time, often do not present their findings in ways that are easily accessible to others. Just as each student poses a fresh face and unique set of challenges for a teacher, new meanings must be generated and derived from each new school improvement effort. Research can facilitate this by forcing practitioners to come up with answers when faced with conflicting evidence or alternative points of view.