IV. The Urban Research Laboratory

As the activities of the Triad of Researchers broaden to include the new efforts described in the previous section, CK:P itself will be able to focus more directly on the research projects that are at the core of this proposal. The funding that we are requesting will go to set up and maintain an Urban Research Laboratory in the school district, whose structure will be described in the subsections which follow. The URL is a natural outgrowth of CK:P's experience, which points to a continuing need for research in the classroom environment and the flexibility to deal with new educational and technical problems as they arise. We believe that the URL will also fulfill an important national need, providing a realistic testbed for the implementation of educational technology. The proposed Laboratory will provide an environment in which technical issues can be addressed thoroughly, with assessment support adequate to document the lessons that are being learned. The scale of the present proposal is set by the funding constraints of the present NSF program, and we expect the activities of the URL to expand as funds become available from other sources.