Research Use in School District Central Office Decision Making

Abstract

The current educational policy climate in the USA places immense pressure on school district central offices to use evidence to inform their decisions in order to improve student learning. In light of both the expectations of evidence-based decision making and the significance of central offices in supporting teaching and learning, there is considerably little understanding of whether, how and why central office decision makers use research evidence to support educational decisions. Through an embedded case study of Hamilton School District and three central office decisions, this research examines the role of research in central office decisions, focusing on how research is used, what research resources are used and the factors that influence use. Evidence of limited instrumental and political uses of research in comparison to conceptual and symbolic use, preferences for practitioner-oriented resources, and the importance of research attributes, organizational context and culture, and decision-maker characteristics are presented. Findings suggest a need for strategies to improve instrumental use, including reconsidering the production and dissemination of research, facilitating the flow of knowledge within the central office, and further examination of conceptual uses of research.

Principal Coaching in Central Office Supervisory Roles: Exploring Persistent Tensions

“…Scholars have increasingly focused their research on understanding the practice of central offices and the administrators who work within them (Coburn, Toure, & Tamashita, 2009;Farley-Ripple, 2012;Honig, 2003Honig, , 2006Honig, , 2008Honig, , 2012Honig & Rainey, 2015;McLaughlin & Talbert, 2003;Swinnerton, 2007). Scholars suggest that leadership practices within central offices differ in significant ways from that of leadership practice in schools (Honig, 2012).…”

Locating data use in the microprocesses of district-level deliberations

“…We know from extant research that decision making is a social process of interpretation, negotiation, and persuasion (Coburn, Toure & Yamashita, 2008;Coburn, Bae & Turner, 2008). In this process, data do not speak for themselves; rather, people must actively make meaning of them and construct implications for action (Coburn & Talbert, 2006;Farley-Ripple, 2012;Kennedy, 1982). How educators use data in decision making is influenced by individual and collective beliefs, which shape how people interpret data and their consequences for policy solutions (Cho & Wayman, 2014;Park, Daly, & Guerra, 2013), as well as by the dynamics of social interaction (Spillane, 2012).…”

School autonomy in practice

“…This school leaders' self-reported evidence-informed school leadership was not supported by the use of either school data or (academic) evidence. All in all, this study's findings indicate an even broader interpretation of evidence than that encountered in comparable studies on research use by U.S. school district leaders (Farley-Ripple, 2012;Penuel, Farrell, et al, 2016). Based on the findings of these U.S. studies, Penuel et al have already suggested "the need for a more nuanced understanding of the differences between leaders' conceptions of research evidence and researchers' conceptions identified in earlier research" (Penuel, Farrell, et al, 2016).…”

“…To this day, however, research evidence and school data often represent two separate fields of activity and study (Brown, Schildkamp, & Hubers, 2017). That said, studies have approached evidence use more comprehensively by asking practitioners what kind of evidence they find useful (e.g., Farley-Ripple, 2012;Penuel, Farrell, Allen, Toyama, & Coburn, 2016). These studies suggested that practitioners use a wider array of sources than either research evidence or school data alone.…”

“…In the Netherlands, many initiatives have been undertaken so Dutch practitioners can benefit from educational research (Nijland, Bruggen van, & Laat de, 2017). Despite current discussions and studies about the importance and potential value of evidence use in education, relatively little is known about the actual use of evidence in educational decision-making, both in the Netherlands and internationally (Farley-Ripple, 2012;Honig & Coburn, 2008;Prøitz et al, 2017a). Do practitioners use evidence in their considerations, and if so, what evidence sources do they use?…”