National Center for Research in Policy and Practice

Through a partnership with the University of Colorado Boulder and Northwestern University, this project studied 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.

Visit the NCRPP website

Location: National
Report: Findings from a National Study (Tech. Report No. 1)

The study aimed to learn how people in district offices and schools use evidence from research studies to inform their decisions by 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.

CEPR, under the direction of Heather Hill, led the measurement study which developed and piloted a survey for districts and school leaders, and fielded responses from a nationally representative sample.

Partners

Research Partners

University of Colorado Boulder
Northwestern University

Funder

Institute of Education Sciences, U.S. Department of Education

People

Derek Briggs

Co-Principal Investigator

Professor of Research and Evaluation Methodology

University of Colorado Boulder

Cynthia Coburn

Co-Principal Investigator

Professor at the School of Education and Social Policy

Northwestern University

David Gilbert Sherer

Research Assistant

Doctoral Student

Harvard Graduate School of Education

Heather C. Hill

heather_hill@gse.harvard.edu

Principal Investigator, MQI Coaching

PIER FELLOWSHIP FACULTY MENTOR

Hazen-Nicoli Professorship in Teacher Learning and Practice, Harvard Graduate School of Education

Bill Penuel

Principal Investigator

Professor of Educational Psychology & Learning Sciences

University of Colorado Boulder

Cynthia Pollard

Research Assistant

Doctoral Student

Harvard Graduate School of Education

James Spillane

Co-Principal Investigator

Professor in Learning and Organizational Change

Northwestern University

Resources

2016

Findings from a National Study on Research Use Among School and District Leaders (Technical Report No. 1). (2016). National Center for Research in Policy and Practice.

Publisher's Version

Publisher's Version

News

Research to Practice

June 09, 2016

Findings from the National Center for Research in Policy and Practice (NCRPP) survey, and how it can help education leaders and researchers create more of an impact, are discussed in the following HGSE Usable Knowledge blog post. Good news for education...

CU-Boulder, Harvard, and Northwestern Launch Center to Study How Educational Leaders Use Research

June 25, 2014

The Institute of Education Sciences at the U.S. Department of Education has awarded nearly $5 million to the University of Colorado Boulder, the Center for Education Policy Research at Harvard University, and Northwestern University to create a new center...

National Center for Research in Policy and Practice