Using Research to Inform the Practice of Teachers, Schools, and School Reform Organizations

The authors describe how a university research center partners with intermediary organizations and high schools to use research methods to support particular goals. These researcher–practitioner partnerships establish goals, articulate effective strategies, and co-construct new approaches to address the challenges of school reform. The article presents two case studies. In the first, the center collaborated with a consortium of innovative secondary schools to build organization-wide capacity to use data to inform school-based decision making. In the second, the center collaborated with a school coach from a high school redesign intermediary to develop a process for using performance assessment data to spur a cross-disciplinary professional development focus on teaching writing. The cases demonstrate the critical importance of researcher–practitioner collaboration and research partners' responsiveness to the identified goals and emerging needs of partner organizations and of the schools and practitioners with whom they work.