TY - BOOK ID - 8206352 TI - The best available evidence : decision making for educational improvement AU - Newton, Paul AU - Burgess, David PY - 2016 SN - 946300436X 9463004386 9463004378 PB - Rotterdam, Netherlands ; Boston, [Massachusetts] ; Taipei, [Taiwan] : Sense Publishers, DB - UniCat KW - Education. KW - Education, general. KW - Educational planning KW - Decision making. KW - Education KW - Planning KW - Children KW - Education, Primitive KW - Education of children KW - Human resource development KW - Instruction KW - Pedagogy KW - Schooling KW - Students KW - Youth KW - Civilization KW - Learning and scholarship KW - Mental discipline KW - Schools KW - Teaching KW - Training KW - Educational evaluation. KW - Educational assessment KW - Educational program evaluation KW - Evaluation research in education KW - Instructional systems analysis KW - Program evaluation in education KW - Self-evaluation in education KW - Evaluation UR - https://www.unicat.be/uniCat?func=search&query=sysid:8206352 AB - In The Best Available Evidence: Decision-Making for Educational Improvement, the editors and contributing authors explore the intricacies of working with data and evidence for the purpose or organizational development in educational institutions. A broad theme that runs throughout this book is the need for policy makers and practitioners to be informed and critical consumers of educational research. The chapters in this volume explore quantitative, qualitative, narrative, and practitioner research approaches and explore the implications for evidence use in educational improvement efforts. Many current texts provide an instrumental resource for educational leaders for use in designing road maps for improvement. As such, these texts offer a perspective based on assumptions that educational personnel are the recipients of predetermined knowledge and evidence, and it is the task of instructors and teachers to implement received knowledge of “best practice”. In this book, we suggest that teachers, instructors, educational leaders, and policy makers are equally engaged in the creation of knowledge and the establishment of improvement objectives. Further, we address questions concerning what constitutes improvement, how practitioners and policy makers can assess the utility and veracity of evidence, and how evidence might be considered in productive and ethical ways. This volume is intended for a broad readership of teachers, post-secondary instructors, graduate students, educational leaders, and policy makers. Finally, this book will combine K-12 perspectives on educational improvement with perspectives from the research on post-secondary improvement. ER -