R&D in 2010

I’ll be spending part of my weekend with the deans of the leading schools of education. They’ve formed a group called the Deans’ Alliance and meet several times a year to share concerns about teaching, learning, and research. With their cooperation, Kappan launched a new column this year titled R&D. Each month’s issue of Kappan features the work of one or more researchers from these major research universities. Since September, we’ve had the privilege of showcasing the work of Mark Wilson (University of California, Berkley), Deborah Ball (University of Michigan), Heather Hill (Harvard University), James Spillane (Northwestern University), Jonathan Francis Osborne (Stanford University).  In the February issue, we’ll feature work on informational literacy by Nell Duke (Michigan State University).

The R&D column is short — just four pages — but long enough to give readers a good sense of this new work. It provides a great springboard for anyone who wants to explore each topic in more depth — the references alone would provide a substantial resource for anyone to use.

If you haven’t already done so, I hope you’ll take time to read and comment on those columns each month. (If you’re a member of PDK, simply log into the web site — www.pdkmembers.org/members_online/members/login.asp?tp= — then go to the “find an article” feature on the Kappan page to locate a topic or author.)

Also, I’d love to know what areas of research would most interest you. You can add a comment about that here.