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Professors Bill Penuel (EPSY) and Derek Briggs (REM) have received a $5 million grant to create and lead a new National Center for Research in Policy and Practice, together with colleagues Cynthia Coburn, of the University of California, Berkeley, Graduate School of Education; Heather Hill, of the Harvard Graduate School of Education; and James Spillane of the Northwestern University School of Education and Social Policy.

a new center that will study how educational leaders—including school district supervisors and principals—use research when making decisions and what can be done to make research findings more useful and relevant for those leaders.

focusing on three areas: measuring current research use in schools, identifying what conditions affect when research is used, and determining ways that research could be made more meaningful for educational leaders through long-term partnerships between researchers and practitioners.

develop a set of survey measures, interview protocols, observation protocols, and qualitative coding guides that will focus on research use

In this 18-month comparative case study, four districts will be selected and followed to investigate their decision-making processes. Each district will have different research use characteristics: (1) one will be low on connections to outside sources of research and low on organizational routines and tools that enable research use; (2) the second will be low on connections to outside sources of research and high on organizational routines and tools that enable research use; (3) that the third will be high on connections to outside sources of research and low on organizational routines and tools that enable research use; and (4) is the fourth will be high on connections to outside sources of research and high on organizational routines and tools that enable research use.

examine purposeful attempts to increase research use by promoting greater interaction between researchers and practitioners