<p> The Role of Research Consortia through the Eyes of Principals No Child Left Behind legislation calls for educational leaders to use evidence to inform practice. Principals are charged with improving student achievement by adjusting resources and policies based on most recent evidence and research available to them. A research consortium is an institution that partners with a school district to engage in ongoing research for the purpose of improving practice. </p><p> The purpose of this study was to understand principals' perceptions of research consortia associated with their district and to discover how principals used evidence produced by consortia. The overarching question of the study was "How do principals learn about and utilize evidence produced by research consortia associated with their district." </p><p> To address my research question, I interviewed 22 principals in two school districts that work with research consortia. The participants included 10 Baltimore City Public School principals and 12 Chicago Public School principals. The Baltimore Education Research Consortium (BERC) is associated with Baltimore City Public Schools. The University of Chicago Consortium on Chicago School Research (CCSR) is associated with Chicago Public Schools. </p><p> Using an interpretivist interview design, four major findings emerged from this study: (1) principals, who are aware of the evidence produced by research consortia, use it to inform practice and decision-making, (2) principals do not have many direct interactions with researchers in the consortia and do not see a pathway to connect with researchers in the consortia, (3) principals who knew about the research consortium in their district have positive perceptions of it, however some principals are skeptical of survey data regardless of the source, and (4) principals in this study explained that consortia do address the evidence to practice gap, but principals did not see an opportunity to contribute to research design.</p>
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:PROQUEST/oai:pqdtoai.proquest.com:3634158 |
| Date | 17 October 2014 |
| Creators | Nesin, Taunya W. |
| Publisher | The George Washington University |
| Source Sets | ProQuest.com |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | thesis |
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