How does the What Works Clearinghouse contribute to educational practices?
What Works Clearinghouse (WWC) is an important part of IES’s strategy to use rigorous and relevant research, evaluation and statistics to improve the education system. (What Works Clearinghouse Procedures and Standards Handbook, 2014) The WWC is created by Institutes of Education Sciences (IES) within the U.S. Department of Education in 2002, which was a respond to the Education Sciences Reform Act of 2002. From then on, the WWC has been a central and credible platform for the evidence-based research on educational interventions, practices, and policies. In 15 years, the WWC has reviewed more than 10,000 in education domain and has made updates in procedures and
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Following that is a part of interviews to the researchers at Research For Action, a local research group in Philadelphia. The last part provides some suggestions for WWC to address the gap between evaluation reports and educational practice, and finally increase the utility of its evaluation resources.
WWC’s selection and rating standards
From establishment, the What Works Clearinghouse has released its own procedures and standards handbook, and has updated three times because of the change of research science.
Besides the current handbook, the WWC also keeps its prior ones on its website, and provides information of standard that was used for the study review for each intervention report. The standards and procedure system enables the WWC to do objective and consistent reviews for thousands of studies as well as facilitate the usage of this website.
The current review procedure consists of four steps. First, the WWC develops the review protocol. By creating the protocol, the reviewers define the parameters for the research, such as the type of intervention, database, population characteristics, research settings, etc. Following that, the WWC identifies relevant literature from all available databases, which enables the audience to find all relevant studies when they select one topic or intervention. Next, the WWC will screen and review the study to find whether the study meets the WWC standards, with or without reservation. There
The panel of health care experts tasked with formulating these guidelines included masters and Ph.D. prepared nurses, public health physicians, along with family practice physicians and public health researchers. The guidelines were created after the panel reviewed published research and evidence-based studies on the topic using rigorous evaluation, standardization, and inclusion criteria. Tables provided easily understood visuals on how recommendations were ranked and corresponded with the quality of the evidence reviewed. These easy to read tables allowed the reader to identify the strength of the recommendations as well as the level of evidence supporting each recommendation. Considerations as stated previously included not only the efficacy of the treatment but the cost and ease of implementation across the identified
Analyze and critically appraise evidence-based literature to support the solution to the identified problem. A minimum of (5) articles must be identified. This may include guidelines from the National Guideline Clearinghouse, Joanna Briggs Institute, or a review from the Cochrane Database of Systematic Review.
The purpose of a systematic review is to attempt to find, evaluate and synthesize high quality research relevant to the research question. A systematic review uses carefully developed data collection and sampling procedures that are put in place in advance as a protocol. (Polit, 2012). A systematic review must contain the following: a clear inclusion and exclusion criteria, an explicit search strategy, systematic coding and analysis of included studies, and a meta-analysis if possible. (Hemingway & Brereton, 2009). Systematic reviews are conducted by nurse researchers to avoid reaching incorrect or misleading conclusions that
The current review was managed according to the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) guidelines (Moher et al., 2009) and established guidelines for narrative synthesis by Popay et al. (2006).
"Making Sure That Schools Measure Up." Education Week, vol. 36, no. 16, 4 Jan. 2017, pp. 18-20. EBSCOhost. PDF. In this periodical article, Alyson Klein, reporter for Education Week, reflects on Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA), an update to the K-12 education law, in the one year since it was passed in 2016. Klein discusses how the ESSA was designed to improve shortcomings of the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB), the previous version of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act. Klein also examines concerns over greater flexibility given to states and districts regarding issues such as standardized test, school choice, marginalized students. The Obama administration wrote how the accountability portion of the law would work, allowing states to pick their own goals, both a long term goal and short term goals. These goals must address students’ proficiency on tests, English-language proficiency, and graduation
The American public educational system is filled with an assortment of problems. Most students are graduating with less knowledge and capability than similar students in other industrialized countries. Classroom disruptions are surprisingly common, and in some classrooms, nearly continuous. The public education system is having difficulty adjusting to the no child left behind act. The No Child Left Behind(NCLB) is a landmark in education reform designed to improve student achievement and change the culture of American’s schools.
Based on my prior knowledge and this week’s resource, I see a little clear why action research can help me address the needs of my students better. This week I have learned the difference between action research/teacher inquiry and education traditional research. Also, I have learned the relationship between action research and teacher professional growth and decision making. Last, I have been able to see what teacher inquiry/action research look like, how they are similar and different.
It synthesizes the results of various primary studies by using strategies that reduces biases and random errors. These reviews follow a strict scientific design and provide consistent estimates about the effects of interventions, therefore, conclusions are defensible. Systematic reviews shows where knowledge is lacking and can be used to guide future research. These reviews are usually carried out in the areas of clinical tests such as diagnostic, screening and prognostic; public health interventions; economic evaluations; adverse effects and how and why interventions work. Cochrane reviews are systematic reviews undertaken by Cochrane Collaboration members, aims to help people to make well-informed decisions about healthcare by preparing, maintaining, and promoting the accessibility of systematic reviews of the effects of healthcare
Summary: The 1983 report, A Nation at Risk, issued by the National Commission on Excellence in Education and the Goals 2000 report of 1991 by the National Governors Association created calls for education reform in the United States. They resulted in stricter standards for teaching certification, changes in standardized testing, and a raise in teachers salaries especially in the South. President Bush passed the No Child Left Behind Act in 2002 to also try to boost education performance especially for racial minorities and urban centers. NCLB required schools to give mandatory tests to determine student aptitude in core subject courses. Schools are rated according to the Adequate Yearly Progress scale which determines how much a school's testing
While ESSA does not represent the radical departure from NCLB that its proponents claim, and despite the likelihood that many of the policies implemented will face the same problems as those faced by NCLB, the new law does make some promising changes. First, ESSA provides funding for pre-Kindergarten education, an important level of education which was not provided for at all in NCLB. ESSA also makes important changes to the way that schools are allowed to assess subgroups of students, which is an important measure that prevents schools from covering up the poor performance of historically disadvantaged subgroups. Additionally, ESSA also introduces the possibility of using the universal design for learning (UDL), a new approach to curriculum development and assessment that addresses the problem of learner variability; this is a new platform that can help teachers and schools better address the needs of different types of learners and assess them in ways which match their abilities. These changes, along with the previously discussed elimination of AYP, create the potential for promising outcomes.
I performed this action research project at River Community College in West Michigan. The community college provided educational opportunities to the
The tools include “a question development tool, an evidence rating scale, and appraisal criteria for research and non-research evidence” (Schaffer et al., 2013, p.1204). The question development tool provides specific steps for formulating the clinical practice question. The rating scale allows users to rate the “strength of evidence and quality for both research and non-research evidence” (Schaffer et al., p. 1204). The rating scale also allows users to rate practitioner expertise and patient experience.
Education in the United States has long been a concerned issue for teachers, parents, and communities. It is a major political topic, in which government has shown continuous efforts to compare and evaluate standards from state to state by creating and monitoring various programs for overall academic improvement across the country.
We used a broad range of keywords in our search strategy, including free text in addition to the controlled vocabulary terms of individual databases. This is especially important for CPWs where the terminology is inconsistent. The search strategy was developed with the assistance of an information specialist. We also screened relevant publications from the EPOC (Cochrane Effective Practice and Organization of Care Group) Register of Studies.40 Bibliographies of CPW systematic reviews were also searched for missed publications. A recent study suggests that English language restriction does not introduce systematic bias into systematic reviews with meta-analysis.39 Therefore, we restricted the language of publication to either English or French. Studies identified from the search strategy were entered into the reference manager Endnote® (version X4, Thomson-Reuters). They were then manually
The first point is discovery research, followed by evidence summary, translation guidelines, practice integration, and process or outcome evaluation. Discovery research is comprised of research results generated through primary research studies. Evidence summaries take the bulk of research knowledge and summarize it into a single, meaningful statement. It also generates knowledge simultaneously by combining all the findings. Forms of evidence summaries include systematic reviews, reviews of literature, and meta-analyses. Furthermore, they have several advantages, including reducing large quantities into a manageable form, increasing power in suggesting the cause and effect relationship, and increases efficiency between research and clinical implementation (Stevens, 2012). The next points, translation to guidelines and practice integration, are the two crucial stages in bringing evidence to practice. Translation to guidelines involves summarizing evidence in a cost and time effective way to clinicians. These well-developed recommendations, termed clinical practice guidelines (CPGs), consociate clinical recommendation and supporting evidence or recommendations. Leading into the following step, integration involves change of practice through an individual and/or organizational scale. Process, or outcome evaluation, is the final point in