Hidden in Plain Sight: Theorizing Latent Use as a New Form of Research Use

• In Event: Advancing Our Collective Understanding of Research Use

Abstract

Calls for evidence-based practice are pervasive. In response, decades of scholarship have drawn on four categories of research use originally developed by Carol Weiss - instrumental use, symbolic use, conceptual use and imposed use - to examine how research use unfolds in schools and districts. We draw on data from a comparative case study of four purposefully sampled urban districts to theorize a new form of research use: latent use. We define latent use as when educators use a research-embedded artifact to guide their work. In latent use, educators used research via their engagement with a research-embedded artifact, regardless of whether they explicitly acknowledged using research. Our discovery of latent use has important implications for research, policy and practice.

Authors

• Angel Xiao Bohannon, NORC at the University of Chicago
  Presenting Author

• Cynthia E. Coburn, Northwestern University
  Non-Presenting Author

• James P. Spillane, Northwestern University
  Non-Presenting Author