Student and novice researchers may have a general idea for a topic they would like to research, but have a difficult time settling on a more specific topic and its associated research questions. Addressing this problem, this book features contributions from over thirty diverse and experienced research supervisors, mentors, and principal investigators in the field of language teacher education. The chapters are autobiographic in nature, with each contributing author reflecting on relevant, current and innovative research topics through the lens of their own professional life and research work. Offering explicit research topics and strategies for each area of expertise, this book will serve as a useful reference for the seasoned qualitative or narrative researcher, and a helpful guide for new researchers and teacher researchers narrowing down their own research topics.

Education policy and policy making is shaped through the activities of a complex network of educators, educational leaders, researchers, community members, as well as government and non-government officials and organizations. Educational researchers are a critical player in this complex network and their investigations of various educational phenomena can answer questions relevant to the design and implementation of education policy for school improvement. Educational research, however, often has limited influence in larger policy conversations and decisions (Orland, 2009), and this is due to many factors. Educational researchers can provide an evidence-based starting place for discussions about school improvement with the complex network of stakeholders engaged in policy development and implementation, but they must be more intentionally and systematically thoughtful about the connections of their work to policy and policy making. Furthermore, researchers can increase the relevance of their work for policy through the careful design and framing of research in collaboration with end-users, and an awareness of its implications. In so doing, researchers can spur the interest and dissemination of their findings to wider audiences. This book offers resources for education researchers, faculty, and advanced graduate students interested in maximizing the relevance of their research on policy for school improvement. In achieving this purpose, the book is organized into three sections: 1) A primer for education policy making in the United States; 2) Designing research to maximize education policy relevance; and 3) Engaging users of research to communicate its relevance to policymakers. This book is primarily for education researchers, faculty, and advanced graduate students seeking to improve the visibility and impact of their research on school improvement, particularly in the realm of educational policy and policy making. While this book is a volume in the book series for the American Educational Research Association Special Interest Group, Leadership for School Improvement, the importance and usefulness of the topics covered span education research more broadly. Further, the content of this book serves as a comprehensive guide for how education researchers, in general, can better situate their work to influence policy. The book is intended to be utilized by university scholars, graduate students in research or policy courses, post-doctoral fellows, as well as research associates or directors in various organizations relevant to education such as research consulting groups, non-profits which serve education causes, teacher unions, state agencies or state-level educator organizations/associations, and think tanks. Emerging or established researchers in any of these organizations who want to increase the relevance, significance and dissemination of their work into education policy will hopefully find this book useful.

This book includes a set of rigorous and accessible studies on the topic of “research evidence” from a variety of levels and educational vantage points. It also provides the reader with thoughtful commentaries from leading thinkers in the field. The complex process of acquiring, interpreting, and using research evidence makes for a rich and under examined area in educational research, practice and policymaking. Policy makers, practitioners and scholars are in need of additional knowledge and practical steps in terms of the uptake of evidence into practice. In addition, sharpening understanding in terms of the ways in which research evidence is shaped or adapted at different educational levels (school, district, state, federal) as well the factors that support or constrain the acquisition and use of research evidence is of immediate use. While professional support for evidence-based practice in schools has never been stronger, credible research has found only weak large-scale effects. This book provides us with key insights about the nature of this problem and a comprehensive approach to its solution; it is a major step toward realizing the considerable potential for school improvement of reciprocal working relationships among policy, practice and research communities. Ken Leithwood, Emeritus Professor, OISE/University of Toronto The problem of scant research use at school sites is old, but the federal to classroom level scope of this book is unique. The authors' analysis of the current status leads to despair, but they provide a clear and compelling path forward. Michael Kirst, Professor Emeritus, Stanford University; President, California State Board of Education. We have come a long way since the linear "Research, Dissemination, Utilization" models of knowledge use of the 1970s and 80s. Each chapter in this book lays out new directions for understanding how individuals, relationships and systems advance or impede the movement of new ideas into policy/practice. Taken together, they redefine knowledge use as a dynamic process that affects and is affected by specific characteristics of the social structures in which is occurs. It is a "must read" both for those interested in educational change and organizational theory. Karen Seashore Louis, Regents Professor, University of Minnesota

In 2015-16, the Middle Level Education Research Special Interest Group (MLER SIG), an affiliate of the American Educational Research Association, undertook a collaborative project—the development of a new middle grades education research agenda. The purpose of the MLER SIG Research Agenda (Mertens et al., 2016) was to develop a set of questions that would guide the direction of middle grades education research. Ideally, this Research Agenda would serve to prompt discourse and generate research projects that could contribute to the middle grades knowledge base. Members of the MLER SIG identified eight research areas: (a) young adolescent development, (b) cultural responsiveness, (c) special populations, (d) educator development, (e) curriculum, (f) social and emotional learning, (g) digital technologies, and (h) school structures. This volume contains the extensive literature reviews and subsequent research questions for each of the research topics.