GSE forms network to aid schools; Education researchers will help personnel identify, solve problems

By PATRICIA DONOVAN
News Services Editor

The Collaborative Research Network (CRN) has been established by the Graduate School of Education (GSE) to assist local schools, teachers and administrators who want to substantively reform their curriculums and teaching methods or solve problems unique to their schools or classrooms.

UB education researchers will work with school personnel to identify and resolve specific problems related to their individual situations. In turn, the schools will provide researchers with firsthand knowledge of administrative and teaching practices in the field and illuminate for them some of the obstacles and incentives to educational reform.

Access to faculty expertise

Teachers, administrators and UB faculty members can propose ideas for 1998-99 projects to CRN by calling 645-2696. Immediate assistance is available to help applicants clarify ideas and connect with faculty members having expertise in a particular area of concern.

CRN will provide a simple application for a small grant to be used for equipment, materials and labor for collecting and analyzing data, but participating schools are expected to provide matching resources. The extent of involvement of UB faculty members in support of the collaborative research will be negotiated separately for each project.

The network will be co-directed by Robert Stevenson, professor and chair of the GSE's Department of Educational Leadership and Policy, and Suzanne Miller, associate professor in the school's Department of Learning and Instruction.

Stevenson said the network is a mutual-assistance program that can help bring teaching practice up-to-date and research practice down-to-earth.

Answers for variety of questions

The kinds of questions a local school might answer through collaborative research with UB faculty members are many and varied, he added. Researchers might help schools determine how well different kindergarten and preschool programs prepare children to learn to read in the first grade, for instance.

They could help a school find out how well reading and writing are integrated into its primary-grade curriculum. They may offer assistance to a teacher in determining how the uses of primary sources like original documents, photos and artifacts might promote a more authentic teaching and learning of history.

Other possible joint research projects suggested by Stevenson might concern:

- The extent to which girls receive the same curriculum experiences and opportunities in math and science as boys do in a particular school

- How special-education resource teachers support teaching and learning in mainstreamed classrooms

- How reader-response approaches to the teaching of literature serve to develop students' critical and creative thinking.

CRN replaces and extends the UB school's 3-year-old Professional Development Network, which increased cross-disciplinary collaboration among the GSE's several departments and the specialized research programs within them.

Stevenson said the new network also will promote the study of the relationship between educational research and the administrative policies and teaching practices of individual schools. This relationship is of concern to many in the educational field, since it can influence the validity of research findings, as well as their application in the field.

Work will help reform efforts

"CRN will provide UB faculty researchers a much greater degree of familiarity with the specific problems our schools struggle with on a day-to-day basis," Stevenson said. It will provide them with an opportunity to conduct research with front-line educators whose perspectives and insights are different from their own.

"Their work," he said, "will actually help education reform efforts initiated by individual schools or teachers. In that way, it will help improve classroom practices right here in Western New York."