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Comparing Policy Guidelines to the Evidence Education Leaders Report as Useful","","Despite calls for evidence-based decision making, education leaders’ real-world engagement with research remains insufficiently understood. This study analyzes a nationally representative sample of 368 district and school leaders who identified pieces of research they found useful. Leaders valued practical guidance and frameworks, often from books, and used research across leadership domains, including professional learning, instructional support, and implementation monitoring. Although only some sources met ESSA “tiers of evidence,” useful sources more frequently met criteria for program selection.",{"@graph":69,"@context":122},[70,84,105],{"@type":71,"itemListElement":72},"BreadcrumbList",[73,77,79,82],{"item":74,"name":75,"@type":76,"position":8},"https://docshare.wps.com","Home","ListItem",{"item":78,"name":9,"@type":76,"position":14},"https://docshare.wps.com/document/",{"item":80,"name":40,"@type":76,"position":81},"https://docshare.wps.com/document/research-report/",3,{"item":83,"name":65,"@type":76,"position":19},"https://docshare.wps.com/document/what-counts-as-research-comparing-policy-guidelines-to-the-evidence-education-leaders-report-as-useful/591161/",{"url":83,"name":65,"@type":85,"image":86,"author":91,"headline":65,"publisher":94,"fileFormat":97,"inLanguage":63,"description":67,"dateModified":98,"datePublished":99,"encodingFormat":97,"isAccessibleForFree":100,"interactionStatistic":101},"DigitalDocument",{"url":87,"@type":88,"width":89,"height":90},"https://docshare.wps.com/thumbnails/what-counts-as-research-comparing-policy-guidelines-to-the-evidence-education-leaders-report-as-useful/591161.png","ImageObject",300,407,{"name":92,"@type":93},"McQueen","Person",{"url":74,"name":95,"@type":96},"DocShare","Organization","application/pdf","2026-10-31","2026-10-15",true,{"@type":102,"interactionType":103,"userInteractionCount":24},"InteractionCounter",{"@type":104},"ViewAction",{"@type":106,"mainEntity":107},"FAQPage",[108,114,118],{"name":109,"@type":110,"acceptedAnswer":111},"Why does the study focus on evidence use by education leaders?","Question",{"text":112,"@type":113},"The study addresses a limited understanding of how educational leaders actually engage research, despite policy emphasis on evidence-based decisions under ESSA.","Answer",{"name":115,"@type":110,"acceptedAnswer":116},"What kinds of research sources did leaders report finding most useful?",{"text":117,"@type":113},"Educational leaders most often found frameworks and practical guidance, particularly in books, to be useful for their work.",{"name":119,"@type":110,"acceptedAnswer":120},"How do leaders’ reported sources relate to ESSA tiers of evidence?",{"text":121,"@type":113},"Only a small portion of named sources qualified for the top three “tiers,” though sources considered useful for program selection more frequently met ESSA criteria.","https://schema.org",{"og:url":83,"og:type":124,"og:title":65,"og:site_name":95,"og:description":67},"article",{"robots":126,"canonical":83},"index,follow",{"doc_id":128,"site_id":62},591161,1792420765,{"code":4,"msg":5,"data":131},{"doc_id":128,"user_id":132,"nickname":92,"user_avatar":133,"doc_module":4,"category_id":39,"category_name":40,"doc_title":65,"doc_description":67,"doc_content":134,"file_id":135,"file_url":136,"file_type":137,"file_size":138,"view_count":24,"is_deleted":4,"is_public":8,"is_downloadable":8,"audit_status":8,"page_count":139,"language":140,"language_code":63,"site_id":62,"html_lang":63,"table_of_contents":141,"faqs":142,"seo_title":143,"seo_description":67,"update_tm":144,"read_time":145,"preview_page_count":4},5909890329169,"https://ap-avatar.wpscdn.com/davatar_9964176cb1d06d4a9deccf72a44ae3dc","AERA Open  \nJanuary-December 2022, Vol. 8, No. 1, pp. 1–17 DOI: 10. 1177/23328584211073157  \nArticle reuse guidelines: [sagepub.com/journals-permissions](sagepub.com/journals-permissions)[ ](sagepub.com/journals-permissions)© The Author(s) 2022. [https://journals.sagepub.com/home/ero](https://journals.sagepub.com/home/ero)  \n“What Counts” as Research? Comparing Policy Guidelines to the Evidence Education Leaders Report as Useful  \nCaitlin C. Farrell  \nWilliam R. Penuel  \nKristen Davidson  \nUniversity of Colorado Boulder  \nDespite calls for evidence-based decision making, the field has a limited understanding of how educational leaders actually engage research. This study draws on a nationally representative sample of 368 district and school leaders who named pieces of research that were useful to their work. Educational leaders found frameworks and practical guidance in the form of books to be most useful. They report turning to research across different domains of leadership practice, including supporting their own professional learning, guiding instructional activities for others, and monitoring and supporting implementation. While a small portion of sources named would qualify for the top three “tiers of evidence” of the Every Student Succeeds Act, those sources named as useful for program selection more frequently met these criteria. Together, these findings offer a broader portrait of research use, one rooted in leaders’engagement with research as apart of their multifaceted and complex practice.  \nKeywords: evidence use, research use, Every Student Succeeds Act, educational leaders, school leaders, district leaders, leadership practice  \nFederal and state policies in education reflect a commitment to the idea that research evidence has an important role to play in supporting educational improvement and transformation. The current reauthorization of the federal Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA), called the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA), explicitly mandates that state, district, and school leaders use research evidence when they select interventions supported by federal funds. For the first time in ESEA history, ESSA defines “tiers” of evidence, based on the research methods used, that “count” when choosing an evidence-based program or intervention.1 Policies such as ESSA focus squarely on one kind of decision in which education leaders engage: selecting among programs and approaches that have been developed and studied elsewhere. Such policies infer that the most useful research for education leaders will be individual studies that offer causal evidence of program impact using experimental or quasi-experimental study designs (Gordon & Conaway, 2020; Haskins & Margolis, 2015) .  \nHowever, this view represents only a narrow slice of when and why leaders engage with research in their work (Mills et al., 2020; National Research Council, 2012; Penuelet al., 2018) . It does not account for the wide range of activities in education leaders’practice, such as supporting everyday instruction, developing curriculum, engaging in and providing professional learning, cultivating school climatesand communities, making systems-level decisions, and more (Grissom et al., 2021; Huguet et al., 2019; Rorrer et al.,  \n2008) . It therefore misses the broader range of research that education leaders find useful to their work, beyond those that measure the effectiveness of programs.  \nThere is a critical need to systematically examine the predominant premises related to evidence use in education policies. Rather than assuming that education leaders’ decisions are primarily related to selecting programs, we need to better understand the broad range of purposes for which research is useful for leaders as a part of their regular work practice. Rather than advance the idea that the most useful research studies for leaders are impact and effectiveness studies, we need to learn more about what types of research educators actually find u","cbCaicVrw4vSt6Ee","https://ap.wps.com/l/cbCaicVrw4vSt6Ee","pdf",1192092,17,"English","# Background and policy context\n# Research purpose and approach\n# Findings on what leaders find useful\n# Evidence tiers and implications","[{\"question\":\"Why does the study focus on evidence use by education leaders?\",\"answer\":\"The study addresses a limited understanding of how educational leaders actually engage research, despite policy emphasis on evidence-based decisions under ESSA.\"},{\"question\":\"What kinds of research sources did leaders report finding most useful?\",\"answer\":\"Educational leaders most often found frameworks and practical guidance, particularly in books, to be useful for their work.\"},{\"question\":\"How do leaders’ reported sources relate to ESSA tiers of evidence?\",\"answer\":\"Only a small portion of named sources qualified for the top three “tiers,” though sources considered useful for program selection more frequently met ESSA criteria.\"}]","What Counts as Research? Comparing Policy Guidelines to the Evidence Education Leaders Report as Useful | PDF",1792071249,43]