Speaker Information:

Ozge Evcen and Joey Merrin

Education and social science scholars frequently conduct research in school settings. Researchers regularly seek out and build relationships with teachers and schools to conduct various studies of school age children, teachers, and educational practices. At the same time schools and communities face local challenges and practical issues that can be informed by research findings.

As a result, some universities have developed formal research school partnerships to build and sustain a relationship of ongoing research that is embedded in, and benefits the local schools. Despite these benefits for both scholars and schools, relatively few universities across the country have formal offices that facilitate and sustain these partnerships. However, most Top 25 schools of Education have formal and active research school partnerships that facilitate ongoing research in local schools. The Bureau of Educational Research within the College of Education at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign is currently developing and building a new formal structure to support partnership with local schools as an effort to create an ongoing relationship that promotes and sustains research and service between the University and local schools.

In this talk, the Bureau of Educational Research will describe and summarize the efforts that top universities and colleges of education are currently making to build and sustain school research partnerships. We will discuss individual universities' efforts to develop research school partnerships in a variety of different methods and settings. Following, we will share some of the efforts we are currently working on in the Bureau to establish a strong research school partnership. For example, one of our current initiatives is to create an interactive web-based system to assist researchers with placing their research studies in local schools. A question and answer session will follow the presentation in which we seek feedback from researchers that will help to strengthen the research school partnership.

Contact:

Elizabeth Niswander

Sponsor:

Bureau of Educational Research