Research & Resource Curation
Overview
Schools and education-focused organizations often face complex decisions about a range of issues related to supporting student achievement, student well-being, program design, and new and rapidly expanding technologies like artificial intelligence. Yet high-quality research is scattered across journals, policy briefs, think-tank reports, and practitioner literature, making it difficult for leaders to access clear, relevant, and trustworthy guidance.
Research curation and evidence synthesis provide a way to make confident decisions in the face of complex challenges. We bring together the most relevant, credible, and actionable research on a given topic and translate it into insights that help leaders make informed, mission-aligned decisions
Purpose
This service supports schools and organizations seeking to be more intentional in using research and evidence to guide their decisions. Evidence synthesis can help:
identify effective and emerging practices
understand trends in teaching, learning, and student experience
support evidence-based strategic planning and program design
clarify how research aligns or conflicts with current approaches
provide boards and leadership teams with clear, shared background
make complex research accessible to educators and families
The goal is not simply to summarize research, but to curate the information clients need, framed through their specific context and goals.
Approach
Understanding the Question and Context
Every synthesis begins with clarity about what leaders hope to learn and why. We take time to understand the decisions the client is weighing, the school or organizational environment, and how the evidence will ultimately be used. This grounding helps us target the review, filter out noise, and ensure the synthesis aligns with the client’s goals, mission, and constraints.
Reviewing and Synthesizing the Evidence
We conduct a structured review across a full range of credible sources, including peer-reviewed research, gray literature from respected research organizations, practitioner literature, policy analyses, program reports, and national datasets. As we review evidence, we identify major themes, points of alignment or divergence, and the implications that matter most for the client’s context. We then translate the findings into clear, coherent insights through thematic summaries, conceptual frameworks, curated resource lists, or annotated briefs.
Supporting Interpretation and Decision-Making
Research evidence becomes most useful when it informs thoughtful action. We work with leaders, faculty, or boards to explore what the synthesis means for their context, what options it suggests, and where further inquiry might be helpful. These conversations often clarify priorities, strengthen alignment across teams, and reduce uncertainty by grounding decisions in a shared, credible understanding of the research landscape.
WEG Experience & Relevance
Research review has been a central part of nearly every research and evaluation project completed in prior roles, even when it was not the sole deliverable. These projects routinely required reviewing and synthesizing diverse sources of evidence to ground the work in what is known and emerging in the field. These sources include:
peer-reviewed research articles
gray literature
practitioner literature
policy analyses
program reports
national data summaries and descriptive datasets
This experience spans topics such as instructional practices, learner engagement, assessment and grading, teacher development, STEM and experiential learning, multilingual learners, and school culture and belonging. The syntheses supported leaders in independent schools, districts, state education agencies, national nonprofits, and university-based programs as they refined programs, informed strategic planning, or strengthened implementation.
This background enables us to quickly identify credible sources, draw meaningful connections across different types of evidence, and translate complex research into clear and usable insights.
Impact
Research curation and evidence synthesis give leaders a clearer sense of how their questions, programs, or experiences fit within the broader educational landscape. Whether the work supports a stand-alone inquiry or an evaluation or research study, the synthesis offers grounding and context that help leaders understand what is typical, what is emerging, and what is unique to their own setting. It clarifies why certain approaches are effective, supports the interpretation of findings, and brings coherence to complex decisions. As a result, leaders often describe feeling more confident, more aligned across teams, and better equipped to move forward with decisions rooted in credible evidence rather than assumption or trend.