Organizational Problem Solving and the Use of Research in Education Policy

该项目介绍了组织如何使用推拉过程来影响美国教育政策中研究的提供和使用。组织的拉动效应决定了跨政策问题的研究的普及率和类型。负责解决教育问题的组织在征求研究以供决策过程中使用的倾向上有所不同。组织还在研究证据的使用上表现出推动效应，吸收供应，并将其推向由此产生的监管政策。官僚机构和利益集团共同合成研究证据，并利用它来形成最终的监管政策。在这样做的过程中，组织过滤了在制定公共政策时使用的研究。该项目将加强对团体如何提出旨在影响公共政策的论点，以及哪些团体更有可能利用研究来支持他们的论点的基本理解。该项目将提供利益集团和教育问题简介，以便利用研究制定教育方面的监管建议。这项研究将产生洞察力，随后可以为希望影响教育和其他问题监管政策决策的组织和公民使用的策略提供参考。该项目将通过培养学生处理数据、分析、陈述和交流研究的技能，为研究生和本科生的社会研究过程中的学生培训做出重大贡献。因此，该项目与大学校园中从事技能发展的更大倡议是一致的。最后，该项目将为希望影响教育政策的利益集团、政策制定者和公民提供见解，并为影响监管改革提案提供一般性经验教训。该项目涉及理论辩论，讨论组织如何将注意力引导到各种问题上，特别关注他们如何使用研究证据来引导这种关注。教育监管政策的制定是组织重要性的一个引爆点，特别是考虑到它们在两个主要文献中的明显缺失，这两个主要文献汇聚在教育法规中。首先是对规则制定过程的研究。这些文献主要关注利益集团在塑造监管议程中的作用，而忽略了官僚机构如何像过去一样影响监管议程和其他参与者的议程。文献的第二部分是教育政策，人们的注意力不成比例地集中在立法和教育成果上，几乎忽略了监管改革作为政策变化的一个重要来源。这个项目的重点是联邦规则制定的制度化、结构化和透明化过程。这一过程不同于几乎所有其他联邦政策制定模式，因为首先是政策建议，然后是公众评论的机会，然后是修订后的监管政策的发布。这一过程使我们能够评估组织在多大程度上影响了其他参与者的研究证据的提供，并反过来检查他们如何将研究证据纳入最终的监管政策。这一裁决反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

This project addresses how organizations use a push and pull process to influence the provision and use of research in education policy in the United States. The pull effects of organizations shape the prevalence and types of research available across policy issues. Organizations tasked with problem solving in education vary in their propensity to solicit research for use in the policy-making process. Organizations also exhibit push effects on the use of research evidence, taking in the supply, and pushing this into resultant regulatory policies. Together, bureaucracies and interest groups synthesize research evidence and use it to shape resulting regulatory policies. In doing so, organizations filter the research used in crafting public policies. The project will enhance the basic understanding of how groups make arguments aimed at influencing public policy, and which groups are more likely to use research to bolster their arguments. The project will provide interest group and education issue profiles for the use of research in developing regulatory proposals in education. The study will generate insights that can subsequently inform strategies used by organizations and citizens hoping to shape regulatory policy decisions in education and other issues. The project will contribute significantly to student training in the process of social research at both the graduate and undergraduate levels by developing skills in working with data, analysis, presentation, and communication of research. The project is therefore in line with larger initiatives across university campuses to engage in skills development. Finally, the project will generate insights for interest groups, policymakers, and citizens hoping to influence education policy, and general lessons for impacting regulatory reform proposals.The project engages theoretical debates addressing how organizations channel attention to various issues, with a particular focus on how they use research evidence to channel that attention. Regulatory policy-making in education represents a flash-point for the importance of organizations, particularly given their conspicuous absence in two major strands of literature that converge in education regulations. The first is the study of the rule-making process. This literature largely focuses on the role of interest groups in shaping regulatory agendas, ignoring how bureaucracies, like USED, shape both regulatory agendas and the agendas of other actors. The second strand of literature is in education policy, where attention is disproportionately focused on legislation and educational outcomes, all but ignoring regulatory reform as a significant source of policy change. This project focuses on the institutionalized, structured, and transparent process of federal rule-making at USED. This process is unique from nearly all other modes of federal policy-making in that there is a policy proposal, followed by the opportunity for public commenting, then followed by the issuance of a revised regulatory policy. This process allows us to assess the extent to which organizations within USED shape the supply of research evidence from other actors, and in turn, examine how they incorporate research evidence into resultant regulatory policies.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.