This project has three main goals: 1) To provide a foundation for accumulating knowledge about diffusion and sustainability of reform in education with an emphasis on science education; 2) To identify ways that knowledge about diffusion and sustainability of innovations in other disciplines can inform improvement efforts in education; and 3) To establish a forum for cross-disciplinary collaboration and sharing knowledge on diffusion and sustainability of innovations. These goals will be addressed with two strategies. The first comprises comprehensive literature reviews on diffusion and sustainability of innovation in science education, other areas of education and other fields including business, marketing, medicine, public health, and economics.
Intellectual Merit: This project seeks to create a foundation for accumulating knowledge about sustainability and diffusion of reform in education. It takes the essential steps of looking to other fields of scholarship that are more advanced in these areas in order to provide science and mathematics education research with the shared language and conceptual framework necessary for the serious investigation and dialogue that supports accumulation of knowledge in a field.
Broader Impact: This project addresses the national need to identify and scale up effective practices or innovations in instruction and education so that the field can begin to make long-term improvements to mathematics and science instruction. As new practices are developed and brought to scale, they will benefit from this project by using its products to explicitly and effectively support innovation adoption, implementation and dissemination.
