Michael Huberman

Linkage Between Researchers and Practitioners: A Qualitative Study

Work in the area of research utilization has emphasized the importance of contacts between researchers and practitioners not only at the close of a study, but also before and, above all, during its conduct. These contacts have a strong influence on the impact of apiece of research on practitioners. More important, however, is the finding that, in settings in which educational researchers and practitioners have had few previous interactions, intensified contacts in the life of a research project can result not only in applications of the main findings, but also in the establishment of multiple areas of collaboration between the two parties that transcend the impact of a single study.

Recipes for Busy Kitchens: A Situational Analysis of Routine Knowledge Use in Schools

The pick-up head of a magnetic tape player is demagnetized by a moving, alternating magnetic field generated within the front end portion of a cartridge-type housing inserted into the player. The drive capstan of the player drives a carrier on which magnets are mounted to produce said alternating magnetic field. The carrier is reciprocated through a predetermined stroke relative to the pick-up head by an actuating mechanism.

What knowledge is of most worth to teachers? A knowledge-use perspective

In some ways, research in the area of knowledge dissemination and utilization (D & U) constitutes the pragmatist philosopher’s answer to the Hegelian. The construct of “knowledge” is not handled epistemologically but functionally put briefly, who wants (whom) to know what (from whom), in what form and to what effect? In framing and answering these questions, however, we are not sitting in an empirical dustbowl. At least five reasonably well-integrated conceptual frameworks can illuminate the creation, exchange, and use of knowledge: (a) communication theory, (b) theories of attitude change and interpersonal influence, (c) networking and interorganizational theories, (d) adult cognition and information-processing, and (e) the sociology of knowledge. This line of research also asks the question: If you do know what knowledge is of most worth to teachers or, in your view, of most worth for teachers, how do you get it to them? What kind of environment are you trying to breach to reach your “target” public? From what kind of environment is the knowledge base to be extracted? Such questions seem to evaporate from the concerns of more normatively inclined analysts. To read much of the prescriptive literature in the pre-service and in-service training fields is to derive a surreal, almost magical, sense of this issue, almost as if the very invocation of generous, high-minded goals were sufficient to get them achieved, whereas the task is long and difficult. Overall, mainstream educational practice does not seem to have profited much from D & U research, save in one highly visible and policy-relevant area: the study of “school improvement efforts,” usually in the form of implementing major innovations (e.g., Berman & McLaughlin, 1974-1977; Crandall et al., 1982). From the knowledge-use perspective, innovations are simply bundles of constructs, techniques, and materials being conveyed from one or several sources to one or several receivers; and the dynamics of this process can be laid bare and, theoretically at least, improved through the different conceptual lenses of the knowledge-use perspective. Elsewhere, however, the D & U approach has been marginal when, in fact, it could reward both researchers and practitioners. For example, pre-service and in-service education are likely candidates for networking and interorganizational theories. More generically, teachers’ “professional development,” notably in relation to the school-as-workplace literature (Dreeben, 1973; Little, 1981, 1984) is closely related to the D & U area, but has not been studied much from that angle. My brief in this paper will be to substantiate these claims by drawing on the knowledge-use literature, on studies of classroom life and of professional development, and on those segments of my own ongoing research that try to knit together these three strands. I will also retain the more functional or “ecological” perspective of the D & U literature, that is, a perspective that sees knowledge search and use as the response of teachers to the surround in which they operate (Doyle, 1978; Huberman, 1983). My claim here is that teachers will reach outside the classroom for information and

Predicting conceptual effects in research utilization: Looking with both eyes

As the field of research utilization grows and differentiates itself, the need for more integrative conceptualization increases as well. In this article, empirical findings on the predictors of conceptual effects of research on practitioners are brought to bear on such a “pluralist” reading of the data, with the objective of explaining more fully how strong effects are achieved.