Teachers and school leaders make decisions about strategies to support students who struggle academically or behaviorally, but evidence about the quality of these strategies is often unavailable. Moreover, educators need to consider a variety of factors beyond evidence when selecting strategies. This American Educator Panels Data Note examines the sources of information and other considerations that inform teachers' and principals' decisions.

Where Do Educators Turn to Address Instructional and Behavior Challenges?

Laura S. Hamilton, Gerald P. Hunter

ResearchPublished Apr 15, 2020

Teachers and school leaders frequently make decisions about which strategies will best support students who struggle academically or behaviorally, but evidence-based information about the quality of these strategies is not always available. Moreover, educators do not always find the available evidence to be useful, and they consider a variety of other factors to be relevant to these decisions. The Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) provides new opportunities to use federal funds to support interventions (i.e., programs, practices, or strategies) that address not only academic achievement but also students' social, emotional, and behavioral needs. Several ESSA funding streams require that interventions be supported by research evidence and by an assessment of local context and the specific needs of students. Such resources as the What Works Clearinghouse and the Regional Education Laboratories can help educators identify relevant evidence, but education leaders and policymakers need to understand which sources educators turn to and on what basis they select interventions. Recent survey data from the RAND Corporation's American Educator Panels can inform our understanding of where educators find information to inform their academic and nonacademic strategies — from peers, leaders, the internet, or from other sources. These data also shed light on the considerations that educators prioritize when making decisions about interventions.

Key Findings

Colleagues, support staff, school and district leaders are go-to sources

  • More than half of teachers indicated that the first source they would use to find an intervention would be another teacher, support staff, or a school or district leader. The percentage of teachers who said they would first go to a school or district leader or to support staff was higher for nonacademic than for academic interventions.
  • Principals also tended to consult with colleagues, with approximately half indicating that the first resource on interventions they would recommend to their teachers would be a teacher, staff member, or administrator at their own or another school. Principals' responses were similar for academic and nonacademic areas.
  • For academic interventions, nearly one-fifth of teachers reported that their initial strategy would be to develop a resource themselves or ask other staff to do so; 11 percent of teachers said this would be their initial strategy for nonacademic interventions. Teachers were also more likely to conduct an internet search for academic than nonacademic interventions. Online social networks were the least frequently selected resource among both teachers and principals.
  • Among principals, the factors most frequently rated as "very important" when selecting interventions were applicability to their students and/or school context and rigor of evidence regarding intervention efficacy. For teachers, top factors were applicability to students or school context, ease of implementation, and ease of accessing information and resources.

Recommendations

  • Educators may benefit from guidance to help balance relevance to local context, rigor of evidence, and feasibility concerns when selecting interventions.
  • Because colleagues are such an important source of information, researchers and policymakers who are interested in promoting greater use of high-quality, evidence-based materials should consider ways to leverage existing colleague networks or develop new ones that can foster productive dialogue about interventions that are both evidence-based and aligned with local contexts and needs.

Topics

Document Details

Citation

RAND Style Manual
Hamilton, Laura S. and Gerald P. Hunter, Where Do Educators Turn to Address Instructional and Behavior Challenges? RAND Corporation, RR-2575/9-1-BMGF, 2020. As of September 19, 2024: https://www.rand.org/pubs/research_reports/RR2575z9-1.html
Chicago Manual of Style
Hamilton, Laura S. and Gerald P. Hunter, Where Do Educators Turn to Address Instructional and Behavior Challenges? Santa Monica, CA: RAND Corporation, 2020. https://www.rand.org/pubs/research_reports/RR2575z9-1.html.
BibTeX RIS

Research conducted by

The research described in this report was conducted by RAND Education and Labor and supported by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. For this document, different permissions for re-use apply. Please refer to the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation section on our permissions page.

This publication is part of the RAND research report series. Research reports present research findings and objective analysis that address the challenges facing the public and private sectors. All RAND research reports undergo rigorous peer review to ensure high standards for research quality and objectivity.

This document and trademark(s) contained herein are protected by law. This representation of RAND intellectual property is provided for noncommercial use only. Unauthorized posting of this publication online is prohibited; linking directly to this product page is encouraged. Permission is required from RAND to reproduce, or reuse in another form, any of its research documents for commercial purposes. For information on reprint and reuse permissions, please visit www.rand.org/pubs/permissions.

RAND is a nonprofit institution that helps improve policy and decisionmaking through research and analysis. RAND's publications do not necessarily reflect the opinions of its research clients and sponsors.