Category: Research

All Our Ideas

Summary: All Our Ideas is a research project to develop a new form of social data collection that combines the best features of quantitative and qualitative methods. Using the power of the web, we are creating a data collection tool that has the scale, speed, and quantification of a survey while still allowing for new information to "bubble up" from respondents as happens in interviews, participant observation, and focus groups.

Users of All Our Ideas can start their own sites where visitors can vote on existing ideas (e.g. "bring more hammocks to campus") and upload new ones.

Autonomy, Belongingness, and Engagement in School

Summary: A powerful study connected to self-determination theory and student motivation, this study demonstrates the link between school culture and adolescent adjustment. It makes the case that if schools support student autonomy and belongingness, students will become more engaged in learning and will be more psychologically adjusted and filled with "hope."

Rated: (5/5), based on 1 review Posted in InformationResearchPsychology and Neuroscience

Big Ideas in Science Education

Summary: "Big Ideas in Science Education", a blog post from Teaching Science presents Principles and Ideas of Science Education, a great informal resource for teachers of young scientists who want students to know what real science looks like.

Brain Facts: Learning, Memory, and Language

Summary: A short and helpful primer on how the brain develops and learns. This is the basis for the broad research into neuroscience and it's implications for educational practice. Educators and researchers ought to understand these basic processes as a grounding for other research into learning and development.

Center for Applied Special Technology (CAST)

Summary: CAST is a nonprofit research and development organization that works to expand learning opportunities for all individuals, especially those with disabilities, through Universal Design for Learning (UDL). UDL is a set of principles for curriculum development that give all individuals equal opportunities to learn.

CAST's work is inspired and informed by the learners who often get pushed aside in traditional education settings. In other words, "the future is in the margins," as Founding Directors David Rose and Anne Meyer write.

Community Organizing as an Education Reform Strategy Series

Summary: This powerful series was created by the Annenberg Institute for School Reform and the Nellie Mae Education Foundation.

"Community organizing for school reform offers an urgently needed alternative to traditional school reform - one that situates schooling issues within larger economic and social systems, directly attends to issues of power, and builds democratic capacity to sustain meaningful reform over the long term (Anyon 2005; Mediratta, Shah & McAlister 2009a; Oakes & Rogers 2006; Shirley 2009)."

Democracy at Risk: The Need for a New Federal Policy in Education

Summary: Report by the Forum for Education and Democracy that provides analysis and recommendations that call for a new federal role in education to provide every child with the skills needed to strengthen our democracy. Drafted by Linda Darling-Hammond and George Wood along with the Forum's conveners and staff, the report focuses on a new vision of learning, support for quality teaching, and the equalizing of resources.

Rated: (3/5), based on 2 reviews Posted in InformationResearchSchool Change and Education Reform

Democratic Classrooms: Promises and Challenges of Student Voice and Choice

Summary: A valuable primer for educators, students, and parents looking to bring democratic education practices into their schools and classrooms. This paper presents the history and theory of democratic education and explores both the opportunities and the challenges involved with building more democratic classrooms. This is the first part of Morrison's two part paper. A link to part two is provided below.

Democratic Dialogue

Summary: Democratic Dialogue is committed to the critical exploration of democratic ideals in education and society through a program of international collaborative research and dissemination. We engage educators, political scientists, sociologists, philosophers, teachers, policymakers, and cultural workers (e.g., artists, curators, and critics) as well as the broader public community who are concerned with ideals, tensions, policies, and practices of education for democracy. Democratic Dialogue reaches across disciplinary, institutional, and national boundaries through innovative research projects and methods of dissemination, community dialogues and events, and the pursuit of creative approaches to projects that engage themes of democracy, education, and society.

Deprived of Dignity: Degrading Treatment & Abusive Discipline in NYC & Los Angeles Public Schools

Summary: This striking report shows that middle and high school students in New York City and Los Angeles are frequently ignored and mistreated in their classrooms, and subjected to harsh discipline policies that punish, exclude and criminalize them. The report uses a human rights framework to document the use of suspensions, law enforcement and other punitive disciplinary strategies that ignore students' educational and emotional needs. Schools with the most repressive policies are overwhelmingly under-resourced, overcrowded and primarily attended by low-income students of color.

Dignity in Schools Campaign

Summary: The Dignity in Schools Campaign (DSC) challenges the systemic problem of pushout in our nation's schools and advocates for the human right of every child to a quality education and to be treated with dignity. The DSC unites parents, youth, educators and advocates in a campaign to promote local and national alternatives to a culture of zero-tolerance, punishment and removal.

This website includes a searchable database of research on pushout, school discipline, and positive alternatives, specific resources for youth, parents and educators, and information about our active campaign projects.

Diplomas Count: An Essential Guide to Graduation Policy and Rates

Summary: A state-by-state breakdown of graduation rates, finding that nationally nearly 1 in 3 high school students do not graduate.

Disrupting the School-to-Prison Pipeline (book)

Summary: This new volume from the Harvard Educational Review features essays from scholars, educators, students, and community activists who are working to disrupt, reverse, and redirect the pipeline. Alongside these authors are contributions from the people most affected: youth and adults who have been incarcerated, or whose lives have been shaped by the school-to-prison pipeline. Through stories, essays, and poems, these individuals add to the book's comprehensive portrait of how our education and justice systems function - and how they fail to serve the interests of many young people.

Getting Teacher Assessment Right: What Policymakers Can Learn From Research

Summary: "Given the experience to date with an overwhelming focus on student achievement scores as a basis for high-stakes decisions, policymakers would do well to pause and carefully examine the issues that make teacher assessment so complex before implementing an assessment plan. To facilitate such examination, this brief reviews credible research exploring: the feasibility of combining formative assessment (a basis for professional growth) and summative assessment (a basis for high-stakes decisions like dismissal); the various tools that might be used to gather evidence of teacher effectiveness; and the various stakeholders who might play a role in a teacher assessment system. It also offers a brief overview of successful exemplars."

High Schools for Equity: Policy Supports for Student Learning in Communities of Color

Summary: This is a powerful study showing the benefit of engaging and personalized learning experiences, specifically for students of color. This report studies 5 urban high schools that provide such experiences, describing how these schools support students to take ownership of their learning. The study also presents policy recommendations to help develop and maintain schools like these throughout the country.

Incentives and Test-Based Accountability in Education

Summary: This extensive and nearly 10-year long study undertaken by leading educators, economists, and psychologists with support from the U.S. Department of Education and several foundations carries a strong message: high-stakes assessments and incentives such as those mandated in NCLB, high school exit exams, and merit pay for teachers have little or no effect on student learning, and sometimes have negative consequences. While numerous studies and critics of testing and high-stakes assessment have sounded these warnings for years, the prestige and influence of the National Academies and the committee who drafted the report sends one of the strongest signals yet to policy-makers and education officials that we should proceed slowly - if at all - with high-stakes measures of education.

Innovating Pedagogy 2012

Summary: Here is the new report from The Open University -- Innovating Pedagogy 2012: Exploring new forms of teaching, learning and assessment, to guide educators and policy makers.

The series of reports explores new forms of teaching, learning and assessment for an interactive world, to guide teachers and policy makers in productive innovation.

The first report proposes ten innovations that are already in currency but have not yet had a profound influence on education. You can see a summary of each innovation at the menu on the right. Please contribute with comments on the report and the innovations.

Making Teacher Education More Democratic: Incorporating Student Voice and Choice

Summary: This paper follows Morrison's "Democratic Classrooms" article, reporting on the author's project to bring democratic education practices to her graduate education course. She outlines the pitfalls and strengths of the experience and gives recommendations to others about how to bring democratic education into teacher education programs. This is the second part of Morrison's two part paper.

Meaningful Student Involvement: Guide to Students as Partners in School Change

Summary: This powerful guide provides the theory, research, and numerous practical examples for working with students to take action together to improve schools, written by a leading practitioner in the field of youth voice and student involvement. If you can only have one resource on student involvement, this is it.

Rated: (5/5), based on 1 review Posted in InformationResearchStudent Involvement and Youth VoiceToolsTips and Guides

National Center for Education Statistics

Summary: The National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) (see Organizational Chart) is the primary federal entity for collecting and analyzing data related to education in the U.S. and other nations. NCES is located within the U.S. Department of Education and the Institute of Education Sciences.