Healing and Hacking the Research-Practice Divide

Research should serve teachers—not the other way around.

Many teachers have experienced "the research" as something done to them rather than for them—findings handed down without context, mandates without mechanisms, tools that consume instructional time without improving it. Healing and Hacking the Research-Practice Divide argues that this situation isn't inevitable. Research can be powerful, humanizing, and liberatory—but only when it travels with humility, and only when teacher knowledge is recognized as evidence, too.

Rachael Gabriel and Kate Roberts offer practical tools, actionable frameworks, and honest analysis of how research moves through schools—and where it breaks down. Learn to evaluate studies, recognize their limits, and build inquiry practices that genuinely center your students, your context, and your professional knowledge.

This important guide offers tools teachers need to demystify research data and translate debate into informed practice. Inside you'll find:

• A definition of what "good" research is, what it provides, and its realistic limits
• Practical frameworks for evaluating research and integrating it into your teaching
• Tools for understanding why the research-practice divide exists—and who benefits from keeping it in place
• Actionable resources for collective classroom inquiry

The divide between research and practice isn't just a knowledge gap. It's a structural problem. This book gives you the language, the frameworks, and the confidence to name that gap, navigate it, and begin to heal it.