Chapter 8: The Potential for Improvement Science and Research Partnerships to Maximize the Policy Relevance of School Improvement Research

Increased demands by policymakers for evidence-based practices and rigorous impact evaluations in education offer researchers an unprecedented opportunity to influence policy (Tseng, 2012). Yet, academic research has an infamous reputation for not addressing the real problems of policy and practice (Bevan, 2017; López Turley & Stevens, 2015; Polikoff & Conway, 2018; Thompson et al., 2017), being difficult to understand (Penuel et al., 2018), and being slow to adapt to changing circumstances in implementation (Penuel et al., 2015; Polikoff & Conway, 2018). The increasing complexity of the educational policy landscape (Lubienski, 2018) threatens to exacerbate the disconnect between researchers and policymakers. Researchers interested in school improvement cannot be content to “illuminate and critique these processes of knowledge production and use;” rather, we must seek ways to “become more effective operators within the knowledge-exchange environments that surround contemporary policymaking” (Lupton & Hayes, 2018, p. 203).