Research to Practice

For many years, the special education literature has focused on the translation of research into classroom practice (Boudah, Blair, & Mitchell, 2003; Carnine, 1997; Earles-Vollrath, 2012; Lovitt & Higgins, 1996; Warby, Greene, Higgins, & Lovitt, 1999). Researchers ask the question: Why does it take so long to incorporate results from educa-tional research into classroom practice? Practitioners ask: How do I use this research in my classroom?

The result of this questioning is discontinuity in educa-tional practice, that is to say, research that is not translated into educational practice in a timely manner. Stokes (1997) maintained that research not applied is one-dimensional, designed primarily for the benefit of researchers. Several authors have examined the need to translate research into practice and offered suggestions to institute use-inspired research (Stokes, 1997), that is:

Practitioners and researchers who accept the challenge to translate new knowledge into use-inspired strategies or inter-ventions will be one step closer to meeting the requirements of evidence-based instruction. This use of research-based knowledge provides a foundation for educators to justify the use of certain strategies and teaching interventions with the students who reside within their care. It also provides a basis from which educators can gain a better understanding of the application of research in their own classrooms.

Journals that focus on the translation of research into daily classroom practice generally do not report findings from original research but rather focus on how to imple-ment a strategy or intervention that has been shown by the research to be effective with a certain population of chil-dren/youth. Typically, these journals emphasize strategies and techniques that can be easily implemented in a school or clinic setting. These often have curricular, instructional, social, behavioral, vocational, or assessment foci that have direct application in the classroom. The field now identi-fies these as evidence-based strategies (Cook et al., 2014). The key element in this process is the interpretation of research findings and their translation into a step-by-step procedure for implementing the intervention with students. Intervention in School and Clinic is one such journal.

Research-based knowledge contributes meaningfully to the enhancement of the skills and professional knowledge of all educators. With the increasing diversity in classrooms, researchers must be responsible for translating their research into a usable format for educators. Conversely, educators must be responsible for and capable of implementing research-based interventions that meet the needs of all stu-dents. This multidimensional flow of research from those who conduct the research to educators and from educators to researchers provides a synergistic platform with which to close the research-to-practice gap. In short, researchers must write for practitioner-based journals and translate their own research, and practitioners must be trained to translate research into a usable format for the situations in which they teach.

Since 2010, when she assumed the mantle as the associate editor of the What Works for Me Department, Dr. Theresa Earles-Vollrath has been on a mission to facilitate the translation of research into practice for use with students with disabilities. Dr. Earles-Vollrath has worked with researchers as well as practitioners to shape a compendium of excellent articles focusing on the use of evidence-based practices in the classroom. This issue of Intervention in School and Clinic is an example of her work. The “What Works for Me” column is one area in the journal in which some data may be used as an example of the power of the strategy implemented. In this issue, there are seven articles on which Dr. Earles-Vollrath has served as the associate editor. All encompass the multidimension-ality of the translation of the research-into-practice pro-cess. As editors, we salute Dr. Earles-Vollrath for her dedication to this valuable column, and we salute the authors who, in this issue, demonstrate in their writing the power of use-inspired research.