Warrants for Action: An Agenda for Continuous Improvement Research in Education.

Purpose: Recent reports by the National Academy of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine have ignited a new wave of discourse regarding the future of education research and reinvigorated calls for education research to be more relevant to practice. An emerging research paradigm, continuous improvement research (CIR), responds to that debate by placing the pursuit of practice relevance at its core. This article seeks to understand how participants in the discourse surrounding the improvement research paradigm legitimize and justify their positions regarding its use and situate the method within the field of education research. Research Methods/Approach: Through systematic searches of education research databases, reviews of key improvement research websites, and queries to scholars in the field, we draw on Cochran-Smith and Fries's warrants framework to analyze the discourse surrounding CIR as it plays out in articles, reports, presentations, and speeches. Findings: We find that participants in the discourse surrounding improvement research in education rely on the political, evidentiary, and accountability warrants identified by Cochran-Smith and Fries, along with three novel claims, as they discuss CIR approaches and construct their arguments. Implications: These findings make explicit the varied assumptions and claims that underlie arguments regarding CIR. Moreover, they underscore that decisions regarding research funding and support will likely not be made based on empirical considerations alone—but also on stakeholders' values-based assessments regarding which models best hold researchers accountable for results, ensure the public interest is served, and efficiently spend limited research dollars. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]