Moving Knowledge Forward by Strengthening the Evidence in Empirical Research
The MSP KMD project has conducted systematic searches and reviews of published empirical research literature for areas of importance for the MSP program, such as deepening teacher content knowledge, preparing and deploying teacher leaders, and supporting new teachers. A key purpose of these reviews has been to identify the claims each study makes about the area of investigation, and to assess the contribution of these claims to the empirical knowledge base based on the design of the study and the quality of the evidence presented. The nature of claims supported in the current literature, using deepening teacher content knowledge as an example, can be characterized as:
Existence proofs that interventions can affect a particular outcome, such as deepening teachers' content knowledge, under potentially unique circumstances; and
Positive effects result from whole programs of intervention, such as a course or in-service education program aimed at deepening teachers' content knowledge; effects of specific strategies for deepening teachers' content knowledge are not typically examined empirically.
