Improving Student Learning: A Strategic Plan for Education Research and Its Utilization

The state of America's schools is a major concern of policymakers, educators, and parents, and new programs and ideas are constantly proposed to improve it. Yet few of these programs and ideas are based on strong research about students and teachers―about learning and teaching. Even when there is solid knowledge, the task of importing it into more than one million classrooms is daunting.

Improving Student Learning responds by proposing an ambitious and extraordinary plan: a strategic education research program that would focus on four key questions:

• How can advances in research on learning be incorporated into educational practice?
• How can student motivation to achieve in school be increased?
• How can schools become organizations capable of continuous improvement?
• How can the use of research knowledge be increased in schools?

This book is the springboard for a year-long discussion among educators, researchers, policy makers, and the potential funders―federal, state, and private―of the proposed strategic education research program. The committee offers suggestions for designing, organizing, and managing an effective strategic education research program by building a structure of interrelated networks. The book highlights such issues as how teachers can help students overcome their conceptions about how the world works, the effect of expectations on school performance, and the particular challenges of teaching children from diverse and disadvantaged backgrounds.

In the midst of a cacophony of voices about America's schools, this book offers a serious, long-range proposal for meeting the challenges of educating the nation's children.

Committee on a Feasibility Study for a Strategic Education Research Program, National Research Council