Conceptualizations of Scale-Up

As a result of the Center’s needs assessments with IERI projects and our own literature reviews, we found that many lessons learned about scale-up by researchers in fields outside of education had not yet been systematically addressed or incorporated in education research. DRDC investigators expected the conceptualizations of scale-up and methods used in these other disciplines would provide models likely to broaden education researchers’ thinking and stimulate us to conceive of the challenges of scale-up and their solutions in new ways. This line of research resulted in several conference presentations, including a Presidential Invited Session at the 2004 AERA meeting, and a series of DRDC activities and products:

• In 2003 DRDC convened a meeting "Conceptualizing Scale-Up: Multidisciplinary Perspectives," which was designed to balance exploration of scale-up in disciplines outside education with those from extant IERI research.

• Two edited volumes were produced as a result of this 2003 conference, Scale-Up in Education: Volume 1, Ideas in Principle (2007) and Volume 2, Issues in Practice (2007).

• DRDC investigators contributed the two introductory chapters to the Scale-Up in Education volumes, as well as an original and two synthetic chapters in Volume 1, Ideas in Principle and a commentary chapter in Volume 2, Issues in Practice.

• Center staff organized a special session at the 2006 AERA annual meeting around the two books which was chaired by PI Schneider and included presentations by IERI investigators who contributed chapters to Scale-Up in Education.

• The Center held a book launch at the National Press Club in Washington, DC that included presentations by IERI investigators and resulted in a front-page story in Education Week.

• DRDC investigators published "Scaling-up Exemplary Interventions" in Educational Researcher and a chapter on scale-up in the forthcoming AERA Handbook of Education Policy Research.