The NLU Center for Practitioner Research will affect education through collaborative scholarship that contributes to knowledge, practice, advocacy and policy in education. The Center will be an advocate for practitioner research as an essential form of educational research.
Practitioner research enables practitioners in educational settings to study and reflect on their practice in a systematic way for the purpose of improving education and learning. Practitioner researchers are educators who conduct research on their own practice, and, based upon their own research as well as that of others, learn to recognize and enact needed changes in their practice. They can be educators in P-12, postsecondary educators, and educators working in non-traditional educational settings, such as cultural institutions. Practitioner research has the potential to impact education at the student, classroom, school, and district levels.