What's the problem (and does it matter)?: Exploring the relationship between educators' problem-framing and external research use

Abstract

This paper documents an investigation into the nature of the relationship between problem-framing and reported engagement with external research evidence in school-based decision-making. This study serves as an important first attempt to explore and describe this potential relationship and its implications for the use of research in schools. Situated within the context of a larger knowledge utilization research center, the current study uses qualitative and quantitative data from 1,343 K-12 educators collected during the large-scale administration of the Survey of Evidence in Education for Schools (SEE-S). Specifically, the study is guided by the following research questions: 1) What are the problems schools addressed in recent decisions and how are those problems understood by individuals working within those schools? 2) What is the relationship between problem-frame and the likelihood of the respondent indicating that research was used in the decision-making process? ☐ The study employed an a priori coding framework to distinguish types of problem-frames, followed by subsequent binary logistic regression analyses to assess the potential relationship between problem-frame type and the likelihood of a respondent indicating that external research was used in a decision-making process. Results suggest that school-based practitioners are facing a wide array of problems and that they understand these problems in diverse ways. Additionally, results of regression analyses provide evidence for the relationship between problem-frame type and reported external research use in decision-making. Specifically, seven problem-frame types were found to have a statistically significant relationship with reported external research use. These findings have implications for how the education research and policy communities understand school-based decision-making and problem-solving and the role that research may play.