Don Peurach, Barry Fishman, and Leslie Herrenkohl contribute to a pathbreaking new handbook on Improvement Research 

Published on April 1, 2022, The Foundational Handbook on Improvement Research in Education is a pathbreaking effort to build a field of research committed to producing the practical knowledge needed to advance educational access, quality, and equity. Designed for researchers, students, and educators, the handbook elaborates the intellectual foundations, explores the organizational and policy contexts, reviews approaches, and examines methods of improvement research. 

The effort to produce the handbook was co-led by Don Peurach, professor of Educational Policy, Leadership, and Innovation at the SOE. Fellow professors Barry Fishman and Leslie Herrenkohl wrote a chapter, as well as Andy Krumm of the U-M Medical School, who contributed to two chapters. 

Since its publication, the handbook has gained traction, rising several times to #1 new release in education research on Amazon. 

"Grounded in research and theory about what it means to study and radically transform practice, this is a book for any of us who refuse to maintain an inequitable status quo," says H. Richard Milner IV, President-Elect of the American Educational Research Association and Cornelius Vanderbilt Distinguished Professor of Education at Peabody College of Vanderbilt University. "As practitioners build new knowledge, mindsets, attitudes, dispositions and skills during increasingly challenging times, this book should be on the bookshelf of every educator, community organizer, politician and policymaker concerned about what it takes to co-construct opportunity centered practices and policies."