Getting Ideas into Action: Building Networked Improvement Communities in Education

In this Carnegie essay by Anthony Bryk, Louis Gomez, and Alicia Grunow, the authors argue that the social organization of the research enterprise is badly broken and a very different alternative is needed. They instead support a science of improvement research and introduce the idea of a networked improvement community that creates the purposeful collective action needed to solve complex educational problems. The essay builds off an earlier essay by Bryk and Gomez, “Ruminations on Reinventing an R&D Capacity for Educational Improvement,” prepared for a 2007 American Enterprise Institute Conference.