The Initiative for Applied Education Research was founded to provide decision makers with up-to-date, critically-appraised knowledge that may assist them in their efforts to improve education achievements in Israel. Issues with which the Initiative deals are raised by Israeli decision makers, mainly senior officials of the Ministry of Education (MOE). The Initiative operates primarily by means of expert committees, both ongoing and ad hoc, and by study sessions, seminars and workshops, which it convenes. Top Israeli scholars and experts serve on the various committees on a voluntary basis.
Currently, only the Hebrew and English versions of the site are available; The Arabic language versions will be launched shortly.
At the core of the Initiative are three guiding principles:
• Emerging knowledge in various disciplines – from brain research to operations research – can contribute to education policy and practice. Within the field of education and in other disciplines Israel has research capacity that can be channeled toward improving education achievement. Where such capacity is still weak or lacking, the Initiative strives to provide guidance on appropriate and effective research investment strategies.
• Research questions raised by practitioners and other decision makers have been shown (in the UK, the US and elsewhere) to encourage education researchers to broaden their activity so as to generate knowledge useful to education while cooperating with researchers in other disciplines. The effort to provide answers to these questions often yields new theories and research designs capable of advancing education research, the links between research and practice, and ultimately the quality of education as a whole.
• Amid the disunity of expertise and opinions about the condition of education, the causes of its strengths and weaknesses, and best strategies for its improvement, it is impossible to overestimate the value of consensus-based recommendations stemming from careful and objective review of the evidence. Decision makers, educators, and policy makers can all benefit from advice based on dispassionate review of the facts, and in turn can contribute significantly to the development of new and better research programs.
The key ingredients of the Initiative’s strategic vision are these:
1. the questions it tackles stem from discussions with decision makers, from the multi-disciplinary makeup of its committees, from its ability to assemble existing knowledge and information and to reach unanimous conclusions regarding their possible implications;
2. its multi-disciplinary character enables new knowledge to grow from existing disciplinary perspectives;
3. its focus on consensus across broad domains of science and research promotes a culture of sharing and mutually-reinforcing exploration and discovery;
4. the rigor of its peer-review processes ensures that findings and recommendations are evidence-based;
5. its awareness of potential biases and conflicts-of-interest protects both research producers and users from perceived or real distortions of the evidence; and
6. its commitment to make its reports and conclusions public reinforces one of its most cherished values, namely the wide sharing of knowledge that is so critical to the healthy functioning of democracy .
The Initiative's reports, peer-reviewed and approved for publication, are available on the Initiative website. Additional material such as seminar-related presentations and articles and commissioned papers are also available on the site.
The Initiative for Applied Education Research was conceived along the lines of similar initiatives in the United States and Europe – in which national academies of science engage in collaborative activities to improve national education systems, in frameworks designed to draw both on research findings and on past experience. From substantial experience in the UK, the US, and elsewhere, there is ample evidence that the systematic use of knowledge and evidence by practitioners and policy makers can be an important component of a grand strategy for sustainable improvement in student achievement.
The Initiative leads the activities which the Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities conducts in the field of education – part of the Academy's multifaceted efforts to advise government on complex matters of public policy for which scientific evidence can (and should) be relevant. In recent years, in response to requests from various authorities and on the initiative of the Israel Academy, such activities have expanded beyond education, and guidance and consulting teams have been formed to address issues such as welfare-to-work policies, technologies to prevent bioterrorism, and the condition of Israel’s public health system. An amendment to the Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities Law, currently under deliberation by the Knesset, would institutionalize and regulate the Academy's advisory role vis-à-vis the central government and other authorities, making it structurally similar to the National Research Council in the United States.
The Initiative was conceived by the Rothschild Foundation (Yad Hanadiv) which together with the Israel Academy of Sciences and the Ministry of Education founded it in late 2003. During its initial years of operation, Yad Hanadiv provided much of the funding for the Initiative's activities. At the start of 2010 however, the Initiative started operating under the Israel Academy's full sponsorship, and is destined to become the division of education within the new framework being established alongside the Israel Academy.