Technology Transfer and the Field of Education: The Research to Practice Conundrum

Confusion over the role and function of public education in the United States has diminished its capacity to function as a crossroads of cultural, contextual, and technical transfer and diffusion. Teachers have become separated from the study of their own work, leaving the job of teaching innovation to researchers who work for the most part outside of the practice communities called schools. Rapid evolutions in knowledge in physical and social sciences require that teachers make ongoing study of their disciplines part of their practice. Yet, the infusion of innovations about teaching and content is random. This paper explores some of the cultural and historical aspects of this phenomenon.