Handbook of psychology volume 7 educational psychology

596

Research to Policy for Guiding Educational Reform

industrial era, the focal point within school systems tended to

pertain to goals generated externally (top-down) with mass

production designs for curriculum, instruction, and assessment

purposes (Reigeluth, 2001). In twenty-first-century culture, the

focal point is shifting to customized learning experiences and

personal learning plans with goals based on each learner’s per-

sonal needs and interests facilitated by learner-centered peda-

gogy, content area understanding along a continuum from

novice to expert developed through access to knowledge-cen-

tered materials and human resources in the community, and

learners’ needs and achievements identified by formative as-

sessments aligned to personal learning plans using assessment-

centered feedback loops.

Finally, the foregoing research, needs, and challenges fac-

ing today’s learners in K–20 systems also face preservice and

in-service teachers. Researchers are increasingly calling for

learning and professional development approaches that lead

to what they call emerging communities of practice. This idea

is in keeping with the recognition that electronic-learning

technologies allow for nonlinear emergent learning and new

paradigms of assessment. Emerging technologies also allow

for a variety of learning communities and cultures, including

communities of interest, communities of sharing, and com-

munities of caring—all of which can be part of the experi-

ence at various points in time and contribute to both higher

engagement and higher learning outcomes.

WHAT RESEARCH DIRECTIONS ARE NEEDED?

This section provides what I see as basic and applied research

directions that can foster the usefulness of educational psy-

chology’s contributions to education and educational reform

during the twenty-first century. Although educational psy-

chology is generally thought of as an applied field, basic as

well as applied research directions suggested in Handbook

chapters are summarized and others added from my perspec-

tive. All of these directions are then considered in light of im-

plementation and evaluation implications as they are applied

in the context of school and teacher accountability issues.

Basic Research Directions

In making the knowledge base from educational psychology

more visible and accessible to educators and policy makers,

some basic research directions are needed. From the preced-

ing chapters in this volume and from my own perspective, a

number of suggestions can be made, including the following:

• Research that can further refine and elucidate alternative

conceptions of ability and intelligence and broaden our

understanding of the interplay between cognitive, affec-

tive, neurobiological, and social factors that influence the

development of competencies.

• Research on voluntary study groups, effective uses of

problem-based learning, intersections of cooperative learn-

ing and curriculum, strategies for professional develop-

ment and follow-up support for cooperative learning, and

how well cooperative learning works for gifted students or

other students at the margins.

• Research on adult literacy, along with more research on

how teaching word recognition also affects normal and

gifted readers (not just struggling readers) and how to de-

velop teachers to deliver motivational reading and writing

programs.

• Research on the cultural aspects of learning and contrasts

between activity theory and contextualism as alternative

views for understanding the sociocultural context of the

teaching and learning process.

• Research that explores relations between self-regulation

and volition, the development of self-regulation in chil-

dren, self-regulation and the curriculum, and self-

regulation across the life span.

Applied Research Directions

Along with these basic research directions, more research is

needed on the contexts of learning environments and the com-

plex interactions between personal, organizational, and com-

munity levels of learning in schools as living systems; this

includes attention to applied research in the following areas:

• Research on teacher development, including what teach-

ers cite as the biggest challenge—the students themselves.

Excellent teaching is a complex balancing act, and there

are no quick fixes to producing excellent teachers.

• Research on what can be learned about learning and human

adaptability to change during the implementation phase as

new and existing teachers and others in our existing places

called school begin to increasingly use electronic-learning

technologies in new ways. These new ways of learning

promise to be the catalyst for systems change and to a new

paradigm for learning and assessment within electronically

networked schools.

• Research to better understand the comprehensive dimen-

sions of successful schools as (a) promoting a sense of

belonging and agency, (b) engaging families in children’s

learning and education, (c) using a quality and integrated

curriculum, (d) providing ongoing professional devel-

opment in both content and child development areas

What Research Directions Are Needed?

597

(including pedagogy), (e) having high student expecta-

tions, and (f ) providing opportunities for success for all

students.

• Research to identify the best socialization experiences for

positive adjustment with diverse student populations—

examining how children’s understanding of rules and

norms change, how these rules are complementary or

compatible with peer and adult norms, what differential

impacts reward structures that teachers establish have

depending of students’ age and family environment, and

further work on student beliefs and perceptions of social

support from teachers and peers.

• Research that identifies teacher preparation practices that

can foster of the development of metacognition in stu-

dents and the application of metacognition to their own

instruction.

• Research on school-based methodologies for studying the

complex interrelationships between and among individ-

ual, organizational, and community levels of learning and

functioning that can provide solid and credible evidence to

support conclusions about causal connections between

variables.

Producing Credible Research: Implementation 

and Evaluation Considerations

Educators, researchers, and policy makers are recognizing

the need for new evaluation strategies and assessment meth-

ods that are dynamic measures of learning achievement and

learner development aligned with multiple types of formative

and summative outcomes (Broadfoot, 2001; Gipps, 2001;

McNabb, Hawkes, & Rouk, 1999; Popham, 2001; Stiggins,

2001). As people increasingly use the Internet for educational

purposes, evaluation strategies and assessment methods that

can fully capture the complexity, flexibility, and open-ended

nature of the learning processes and outcomes in networked

communities are needed. Shepard (2000) calls for recog-

nizing that different pedagogical approaches need different

outcome measures. Most of our current accountability sys-

tems are based solely on high-stakes scores pertaining to

knowledge-transmission outcomes, whereas research find-

ings on how people learn and what is needed for twenty-first-

century citizenry pertain to achieving knowledge-adaptation

and knowledge-generation, higher-order thinking, technolog-

ical literacy, and social-emotional outcomes (Bransford,

Brown, & Cocking, 1999; Carroll, 2001; Groff, 2001; Mc-

Combs, 2001a; McNabb, 2001; Ravitz, 2001; Repa, 2001).

Evaluation and assessment designs need to be based

not only on knowledge-centered principles but also on a

combination of community-centered and learner-centered

principles. Some learning communities thrive, whereas oth-

ers get started and dissipate. Development of new evaluation

strategies and assessment methods will lead to an under-

standing of what makes particular communities viable and

how best to support learning in both on- and off-line learning

communities. Assessment measures can be designed to pro-

vide data about the balance between individualized and

group learning processes, instructional strategies and activity

structures, and outcomes within different types of learning

communities (McCombs, 2000b).

A host of other issues that will expand into the twenty-first

century concern the growth of technology-based learning

environments. In such environments, educational psychol-

ogists can play a central role in defining research and eval-

uation data requirements. For example, data collected in

technology-based environments may be required to calibrate

the online school climate and address research-based con-

cerns about the negative effects of the distal nature of online

relationships and the amount of time these distal relationships

take away from close, more nurturing relationships (Mc-

Combs, 2001a; McNabb, 2001; Repa, 2001). Research con-

ducted by Kraut et al. (1998) indicates that a unit of measure

with which to assess social ties in cyberspace is needed to

foster the development of children’s overall mental, social,

and physical health and well-being. Building such measures

on what we have learned is essential.

Other measurement and evaluation challenges concern

the balancing of content knowledge gains against other,

nonacademic educational goals. Currently our educational

systems have a proliferation of standards competing for the

attention of teachers and students. Dede (2000) points out

that no one person can possibly meet all the standards that

many states are now requiring of teachers and students. This

phenomenon is indicative of a knowledge transmission mode

of operating. In a traditional transmission-of-knowledge

learning situation, not knowing has resulted in disadvantages

to some learners in terms of future learning opportunities and

decisions made based on high-stakes assessment scores. In

a knowledge-generation learning situation, however, not

knowing provides the foundation for the inquiry and calls for

assessment-centered practices for feedback and revision

(Bransford et al. 1999; Carroll, 2001). The new types of as-

sessments for which researchers and evaluators are calling

rely on communities in which learners have trusting rela-

tionships; in such relationships, learners feel comfortable

enough to admit that they didn’t understand a task, and they

are willing and feel safe in exposing their uncertainty

(Bransford, 2001; McLaughlin, 2001; Rose, 2001; Wilson,

2001).

598

Research to Policy for Guiding Educational Reform

Our present accountability system has created an overem-

phasis on summative assessments with little useful feedback

at the personal, organizational, and community levels. Ravitz

(2001) points out that current high-stakes and summative as-

sessments are performed solely for Big Brother and do not

provide feedback helpful to learners and leaders. According

to Braun (2001), the present systems tend to focus on collect-

ing summative data needed by those most removed from

schools and the learning process—that is, policy makers.

Little time is afforded to efforts needed to collect more for-

mative data to serve the needs of those involved in shaping

the learning process and thus its outcomes—that is teachers,

students, and parents. However, issues pertaining to summa-

tive assessment need to be addressed because as a society, we

want students to show some ability to transfer their learning

to new situations (Bransford, 2001). There are important dif-

ferences between static assessments of transfer (e.g., in

which people learn something and then try to solve a new

problem without access to any resources) versus dynamic as-

sessments (e.g., assessments that allow people to consult re-

sources and demonstrate the degree to which they have been

preparing for future learning in particular areas). Portfolios

properly designed can support formative data needed for

learning and summative data for accountability within the

community (Braun, 2001).

Formative assessment needs to combine input from all

three levels of the learning community (i.e. personal, organi-

zational, and community levels) through self-evaluation,

peer critique, and expert feedback focused on conceptual un-

derstandings and skills that transfer. New evaluation strate-

gies and assessment methods suitable for digital learning can

capture learner change, growth, and improvement as it occurs

in networked learning communities. This will involve issues

of scale, as pointed out by Honey (2001). She suggests the

real work of reform involves rethinking at the local level. She

points out that we need to take seriously the challenge of

working in partnership with schools and districts on terms

that are meaningful to the people ultimately responsible for

educating students—administrators, teachers, parents, and

the students themselves (Cohen & Barnes, 1999; Meier,

1999; Sabelli & Dede, in press; Schoenfield, 1995; Tyack &

Cuban, 1995). This process can perhaps best be understood

as one of diagnosis—an interpretive or deductive identi-

fication of how particular local qualities work together to

form the distinctive elements of the learning community.

The process of adaptation through experimentation and

interpretation—what Nora Sabelli calls the localization of

innovation—is critical to the work of reform (Honey, 2001).

Confrey and Sabelli (2001) call for programmatic evalua-

tions and assessment to be informed by implementation

research that builds upon and contributes to increasingly

more successful implementations of innovation. Implementa-

tion research expects the system to react adaptively to the

intervention and documents how the intervention and the

system interact, changing both the approach and the system.

Confrey and Sabelli identify two scales of implementation

research needed for sustainable, cumulative education im-

provements: within-project and across-project implemen-

tation research. Within-project implementation research

implies the need to devote resources to project-level re-

search.  Across-project implementation research implies

thinking hard about how to revise and refine funding efforts

to ensure maximum learning from current efforts; it also im-

plies becoming able to use this knowledge to inform the next

round of programmatic research. These and other issues are

areas in which educational psychology’s knowledge base will

be needed.

HOW CAN EDUCATIONAL PSYCHOLOGY’S

KNOWLEDGE BASE BEST BE APPLIED TO

EDUCATIONAL REFORM ISSUES IN THE

TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY?

This section builds on issues introduced in the prior sections

and discusses them within a living-systems framework for

education —that is, my focus here is to discuss what I believe

are ways in which educational psychology’s knowledge base

can be applied in whole-school or systemic reform efforts (in

terms of both the overall organizational and personal do-

mains in living systems); in reform efforts aimed at curricu-

lum, instruction, and assessment (in terms of both the

personal and technical domains of living systems); and in re-

form efforts aimed at creating new learning communities and

cultures, including those in electronic-learning environments

(in terms of both the personal and community levels of living

systems). The dominance of people (the personal domain) in

all levels of living systems is then discussed as the funda-

mental rationale for the role educational psychology can and

should play in educational reform in the twenty-first century.

Implications for Application in Systemic Reform Efforts

A focus on the learner and the personal domain emerges from

those who see schools as living systems (Wheatley &

Kellner-Rogers, 1998). As people in living systems such as

educational environments are given more opportunities to be

creatively involved in how their work gets done, standards of

functioning are not imposed or mandated from outside;

rather, these standards, measures, values, organizational

How Can Educational Psychology’s Knowledge Base Best Be Applied to Educational Reform Issues in the Twenty-first Century?

599

structures, and plans come from within—through an ongoing

dialogue in which people share perceptions, seek out a diver-

sity of interpretations, and agree on what needs to be done. In

this process of learning and change, research-validated prin-

ciples that are agreed upon can be guides to determine what

will work well in the current situation or context such that the

system is designed to take care of itself, others, and the place

(Wheatley & Kellner-Rogers, 1998).

A key implication is that the larger context of education

must support and value individual learners as well as learning

outcomes. The culture and climate must acknowledge the

purpose of education as going beyond academic competence

and content knowledge alone. There must be a shared vision,

values, and sense of inclusive ownership among all stake-

holders about purpose of education. Restoring a sense of

schools as caring communities is a fundamental way to pro-

vide social and emotional support.

Similar concerns in the moral dimensions of school are

described by Berreth and Berman (1997). These dimensions

attempt to nurture empathy and self-discipline and to help

students develop social skills and moral values. The practices

of small schools, caring adults, community service, and par-

ent involvement are recommended along with processes and

practices of modeling, direct instruction, experience, and

continual practice. The learner-centered framework can be

used to accomplish these purposes. Individuals can be as-

sisted to learn and develop high levels of self-awareness,

self-control, empathy, perspective taking, and social skills in

handling relationships. One guideline stressed is that students

should be active partners in creating a caring classroom cli-

mate and community (Elias et al., 1997).

Another critical implication for practice is that attention

should be given to the role of student perceptions and input.

Freiberg (1998) acknowledges that few climate measures use

students as a source of feedback but believes each student’s

perspective is critical—particularly during transitions from

one school level to the next. Given the importance of this

feedback, Freiberg argues that using measures that assess stu-

dent perceptions and worries about school should be part of

all school reform efforts. A case is also made for the impor-

tance of caring to positive development. For example, Elias

et al. (1997) believe that caring is central to the shaping of

meaningful, supportive, rewarding, and productive relation-

ships. Caring occurs when children believe that adults uncon-

ditionally accept and respect them and when the community

believes that everyone is important and has something to con-

tribute. But can the importance of caring be acknowledged as

a critical part of the current reform agenda?

Palmer (1999) argues that we need to acknowledge that

not only do teaching and learning involve intellect and

emotion, but they also involve the human spirit. He under-

scores the point that teaching and learning are not either-or in

the sense of being intellectual or spiritual. He contends that

teachers—regardless of their subject matter and who their

students are—end up teaching who they are. The biggest chal-

lenge is to provide teachers with adequate time and support to

reflect on questions worth asking. Time for self-reflection can

renew and transform practices and ways of relating to self and

others. Teachers need opportunities to learn and change their

minds.

To accomplish trusting relationships among and between

teachers and students, strategies for promoting school cul-

tures of caring need to be implemented gradually and be

guided by student voices. Research by Battistich, Soloman,

Watson, and Schaps (1997) shows that middle school stu-

dents’ perceptions of sense of school as community were

consistently associated with a positive orientation toward

school and learning—including attraction to school, task ori-

entation toward learning, educational aspirations, and trust

and respect for teachers. The data also indicated that stu-

dents’ perceptions of community were positively associated

with prosocial attitudes, social skills, and sense of autonomy

and efficacy; they were negatively related to students’ drug

use and involvement in delinquent behavior. When these

communities satisfy basic psychological needs, students

become bonded to such schools and accept their values.

According to Schaps and Lewis (1999), the structural

changes necessary to create caring school cultures are rela-

tively simple and inexpensive to bring about. The larger issue

is to achieve a fundamental attitude shift among educators,

policy makers, and the public. They must be convinced that

in addition to responding to pressure to produce high test

scores, it is legitimate and necessary to focus on the develop-

ment of caring and competent people. School time spent de-

veloping trusting relationships, talking with students, and

guiding them to be more competent across all domains of car-

ing must also be deemed valuable.