Report On A Conference On Models Of Implementation Research Within Science And Mathematics Instruction In Urban Schools

Abstract

“In October 2001, the National Science Foundation supported a meeting of representatives of four major research-oriented urban systemic science and mathematics education reform projects. These representatives joined with other leading education researchers with similar interests to articulate what has been learned about the process of creating productive and sustainable partnerships between researchers and urban schools, driven by student learning goals. The main goal was to contribute to the development of a base of research knowledge to inform and guide other researcher-practitioner collaborative teams in conducting further research more efficiently.”

This report documents the proceedings and the deliberations of this conference that were led by these four NSF-sponsored projects (LeTUS, SYRCE, Schools for Thought, and Union City Online). Common themes that emerged from the working group discussions which are elaborated on in this report include: conditions for successful researcher-school partnerships; consideration of models underlying the research; timescales, critical mass, and capacity building; scalability and sustainability; access and use of data; and critical issues and open questions.