This volume aims to help prospective educational researchers plan their research in schools more carefully. It focuses on such issues as: access and credibility in the school; traditional issues of designing research; questions that emerge as the design is imposed on the school culture and setting particularly with regard to school staff and student assessment; the length of interventions and whether or not to schedule follow-up studies; and how to interpret and communicate findings to schools and policy makers. Using personal experiences from their field research to illustrate key concepts, the authors have also included a research project to clarify the practical issues of school research.

This book argues for independent, critical research on education policy in the context of attacks on the quality and usefulness of educational research in general. It takes issue with the argument, promoted by government departments and agencies that education policy research should be limited to work that assists policy-makers. Against this position, the book advocates independent, critical research that scrutinizes policy in relation to its consequences for equality and social justice. It argues that practitioners and academic researchers should form a research community that develops its own knowledge base from which so-called evidence based policymaking in education may be assessed and challenged. The book offers guidance on the theoretical and methodological resources available to practitioners and others with an interest in doing research on policy and discusses some of the main issues and problems in doing policy research on education. It offers examples of research on policy at different system levels, pursuing themes such as globalization, changing governance of education, selection, choice and exclusion, managerialism and the feminisation of educational management. It argues for attention to the history of policy in education as a resource for understanding the present, and concludes with recommendations for future research in areas where contestation of official agendas is needed.

Readers are taken through the various stages in conducting case study research, including a helpful account of data collection and data analysis methods. Structured, narrative and descriptive approaches to writing case study reports are also discussed.

This open access book explores the nexus between knowledge and space with a particular emphasis on the role of educational settings that are, both, shaping and being reshaped by socio-economic and political processes. It gives insight into the complex interplay of educational inequalities and practices of educational governance in the neighborhood and at larger geographical scales. The book adopts quantitative and qualitative methodologies and explores a wide range of theoretical perspectives by drawing upon empirical cases and examples from France, Germany, Italy, the UK and North America, and presents and reflects ongoing research of international scholars from various disciplinary backgrounds such as education, human geography, public policy, sociology, and urban and regional planning. As such, it provides an interesting read for scholars, students and professionals in the broader field of social, cultural and educational studies, as well as policy makers and practitioners in the fields of education, pedagogy, social work, and urban and regional planning.

Co-published by Routledge for the American Educational Research Association (AERA) Educational policy continues to be of major concern. Policy debates about economic growth and national competitiveness, for example, commonly focus on the importance of human capital and a highly educated workforce. Defining the theoretical boundaries and methodological approaches of education policy research are the two primary themes of this comprehensive, AERA-sponsored Handbook. Organized into seven sections, the Handbook focuses on (1) disciplinary foundations of educational policy, (2) methodological perspectives, (3) the policy process, (4) resources, management, and organization, (5) teaching and learning policy, (6) actors and institutions, and (7) education access and differentiation. Drawing from multiple disciplines, the Handbook’s over one hundred authors address three central questions: What policy issues and questions have oriented current policy research? What research strategies and methods have proven most fruitful? And what issues, questions, and methods will drive future policy research? Topics such as early childhood education, school choice, access to higher education, teacher accountability, and testing and measurement cut across the 63 chapters in the volume. The politics surrounding these and other issues are objectively analyzed by authors and commentators. Each of the seven sections concludes with two commentaries by leading scholars in the field. The first considers the current state of policy design, and the second addresses the current state of policy research. This book is appropriate for scholars and graduate students working in the field of education policy and for the growing number of academic, government, and think-tank researchers engaged in policy research. For more information on the American Educational Research Association, please visit: http://www.aera.net/.

The book offers guidance on the theoretical and methodological resources available to practitioners and others with an interest in doing research on policy and discusses some of the main issues and problems in doing policy research on education. It offers examples of research on policy at different system levels, pursuing themes such as globalization, changing governance of education, selection, choice and exclusion, managerialism and the feminisation of educational management.

This work explores how to set about historical research in education. It locates this field in relation to changes in educational research, historical research, and a range of social sciences. It offers a theoretical guide to the rationales and problems of the field as well as to current opportunities for research. It also gives practical advice for getting started and for suitable research methods in different kinds of projects, and in doing so draws critically on international literature. It includes detailed case studies on the following topics in historical research: curriculum and classrooms, Foucauldian interpretations, the Alternative Road, literacy in the nineteenth century, and the university history curriculum.

Education is a hot topic. From the stage of presidential debates to tonight's dinner table, it is an issue that most Americans are deeply concerned about. While there are many strategies for improving the educational process, we need a way to find out what works and what doesn't work as well. Educational assessment seeks to determine just how well students are learning and is an integral part of our quest for improved education. The nation is pinning greater expectations on educational assessment than ever before. We look to these assessment tools when documenting whether students and institutions are truly meeting education goals. But we must stop and ask a crucial question: What kind of assessment is most effective? At a time when traditional testing is subject to increasing criticism, research suggests that new, exciting approaches to assessment may be on the horizon. Advances in the sciences of how people learn and how to measure such learning offer the hope of developing new kinds of assessments-assessments that help students succeed in school by making as clear as possible the nature of their accomplishments and the progress of their learning. Knowing What Students Know essentially explains how expanding knowledge in the scientific fields of human learning and educational measurement can form the foundations of an improved approach to assessment. These advances suggest ways that the targets of assessment-what students know and how well they know it-as well as the methods used to make inferences about student learning can be made more valid and instructionally useful. Principles for designing and using these new kinds of assessments are presented, and examples are used to illustrate the principles. Implications for policy, practice, and research are also explored. With the promise of a productive research-based approach to assessment of student learning, Knowing What Students Know will be important to education administrators, assessment designers, teachers and teacher educators, and education advocates.

Teachers of Color and Indigenous Teachers are underrepresented in public schools across the United States of America, with Black, Indigenous, and People of Color making up roughly 37% of the adult population and 50% of children, but just 19% of the teaching force. Yet research over decades has indicated their positive impact on student learning and social and emotional development, particularly for Students of Color and Indigenous Students. A first of its kind, the Handbook of Research on Teachers of Color and Indigenous Teachers addresses key issues and obstacles to ethnoracial diversity across the life course of teachers’ careers, such as recruitment and retention, professional development, and the role of minority-serving institutions. Including chapters from leading researchers and policy makers, the Handbook is designed to be an important resource to help bridge the gap between scholars, practitioners, and policy makers. In doing so, this research will serve as a launching pad for discussion and change at this critical moment in our country’s history. The volume’s goal is to drive conversations around the issue of ethnoracial teacher diversity and to provide concrete practices for policy makers and practitioners to enable them to make evidence-based decisions for supporting an ethnoracially diverse educator workforce, now and in the future.

The overall purpose of this text is to introduce beginning researchers to the study of educational and social policy, how it has been examined from a scholarly perspective, and the salient issues to consider in conceptualizing and conducting policy research. The emphasis is on "introduce," as the various policy fields within the public sector (for example, education, energy, health, labor) are much too diverse to include in depth in a single volume on theoretical concepts and research methods. The focus is not so much on the substance of policymaking as on understanding the interplay between how policy is made and implemented and the various conceptual approaches and methods researchers can use to frame and conduct policy studies. The underlying assumption is that a critique of the substantive, theoretical, and methodological issues involved in studying policy can help researchers conduct policy studies that are more informative in guiding policy development and more effective in assessing the impact of policy reforms. *Part I acquaints readers with substantive issues and challenges related to the study of the policy process, and includes chapters on federalism and policymaking, and on studying policy development, implementation, and impact. *Part II examines different conceptual frameworks and theories for the study of policy, with chapters on political culture and policymaking, the punctuated-equilibrium theory and the advocacy coalition framework, economic and organizational perspectives, and new approaches (e.g., feminism, critical theory, postmodernism). *Part III focuses research methods for studying policy, covering research design, qualitative methods, multilevel methods for policy research, and growth modeling methods for examining policy change. *Part IV compares the diversity of approaches used by policy scholars with respect to their strengths and weaknesses, and presents a number of issues for further consideration in conducting policy research. This introduction to theories and methods of conducting policy research is intended to give prospective researchers an appreciation of the relationship among policy problems, empirical methods, and practice, and to contribute to building their skills in conceptualizing and conducting policy research that answers important questions. The text includes examples of studies to illustrate the diversity of methodological techniques, and discusses issues related to the design and conduct of original educational policy studies. Studying Educational and Social Policy: Theoretical Concepts and Research Methods is designed primarily for graduate courses in educational policy and educational research and is appropriate as well for research methodology courses in other disciplines, including statistics and research methodology in the social sciences, organizational studies, public policy, and political science