This article reviews research on data and evidence use in research–practice partnerships to identify conditions under which evidence from early warning indicator systems might be used productively.

This chapter presents an introduction to design-based implementation research (DBIR). We describe the need for DBIR as a research approach that challenges educational researchers and practitioners to transcend traditional research/practice barriers to facilitate the design of educational interventions that are effective, sustainable, and scalable. We examine antecedents to DBIR, including evaluation research, community-based participatory research, design-based research, and implementation research. The four core principles of DBIR are explained: (1) a focus on persistent problems of practice from multiple stakeholders’ perspectives; (2) a commitment to iterative, collaborative design; (3) a concern with developing theory and knowledge related to both classroom learning and implementation through systematic inquiry; and (4) a concern with developing capacity for sustaining change in systems. We close with an overview of the chapters contained in this NSSE Yearbook on DBIR and explain how each chapter contributes to the overall development of the DBIR approach.

This chapter focuses on how researchers and practitioners negotiate the focus of their joint work within design-based implementation research (DBIR). Studying and facilitating successful negotiation of the problems that become the focus of work and the search for solutions is important for developing DBIR, because of its commitment to focusing on persistent problems of practice from multiple stakeholders’ perspectives. Case studies of two different research–practice partnerships provide a context for exploring two different perspectives on negotiation. In one case study, the notion of partnerships as forms of cultural exchange across institutional boundaries that differ with respect to goals, norms, and practices is used to analyze a design partnership focused on repurposing curriculum units in elementary science. In the second case study, the concept of framing as developed in social movement theory is used to illuminate issues of status and authority within a partnership between a district and researchers. The chapter concludes by describing the contributions of each perspective to an understanding of how teams jointly negotiate the focus of their work and by providing some recommendations for how teams can do so successfully.

This article examines how the effects of institutions on teaching practices can be mediated by social networks within schools. The study focuses on teachers’ responses to policies developed from the National Reading Panel’s recommendations for teaching reading.

This essay introduces the issue, Learning Research as a Human Science.

This chapter contrasts the approach to educational evaluation championed in recent educational policy-making with a dialogical epistemology of evaluation. A dialogical epistemology, drawn from the writings of M. M. Bakhtin, enjoins evaluators to consider multiple voices and their relative authority and power in making judgments of the worth or merit of programs. Further, it positions them as participants in policy discussions rather than arbiters of program value whose authority stems from the methods they use.

This concluding chapter revisits the question of why a human sciences approach to research on learning is necessary and summarizes major themes from across the chapters. The conclusion highlights the need for a democratic practice of educational research, the importance of researchers’ making explicit and participating in the imagination and constitution of new social futures, and the expansion of possibilities for understanding, action, and “liminal” participation in practice as potential teloi of learning.

This article explores how social network analysis can help researchers studying teachers' professional interactions understand the internal structure of teacher communities and assess teachers' social capital for implementing ambitious reforms. Case study data from two schools in California illustrate how network data complement interview data to help explain the success or failure of reforms to take hold in schools.

The purpose of this chapter is to examine the ways in which technology is transforming practices of assessment and educational decision making.