Defining Usable Knowledge
Education research must provide knowledge that helps educators do their jobs. Its role is to discover and to test and certify the knowledge, skills, and tools educators can use to facilitate learning.

Understood this way, education research should generate what can be called usable knowledge—knowledge that generates tools, materials, and curricula that are then used and further studied in practice. With this in mind, the Usable Knowledge Conferences at the Harvard Graduate School of Education aim to disseminate what is known about ways to design, manage, and support education research that will enable educators to ensure that substantially all students meet or exceed standards in core subjects and skills. We hope that the conferences will help to inform both practitioners and the public about the most effective educational practices.

Ellen Condliffe Lagemann
Charles Warren Professor of the History of American Education
Dean of the Harvard Graduate School of Education