About CASTL

The Center for Advancing the Study of Teaching
and Learning (CASTL) was established in 1998 in the Department of Foundations and Leadership at Duquesne University School of Education. Propelled by its mission and goals, CASTL engages in research programs dedicated to understanding, advancing and disseminating evidence-based study of the teaching-learning process. Toward this end, CASTL develops and maintains professional learning communities sustained by systematic and intentional inquiry and supported by learning-centered online environments where the creation of new knowledge and the weighing of new evidence against favored beliefs is everyone's most important work.

In all of its endeavors, CASTL fosters a culture of distributed learning in real world classrooms, promotes the construction of significant understandings from educational theory, research, and effective educational practice, and nurtures dispositions toward data-driven decision making and intellectual honesty. More specifically, and in order to share what it learns, CASTL promotes and supports publications, presentations and other networking activities. Learning is shared across a variety of contexts that facilitate the intentional use of relevant educational research and theory in support of effective educational practice to generate knowledge networks and learning legacies.

Today, fundamental questions of equity, diversity, and social justice take on special significance in our schools. As our society becomes more pluralistic and the world more interconnected, educators must find new ways to learn from and with each other, to contribute diverse perspectives, and to improve the quality of the teaching-learning process for all. CASTL, as part of its dedication to evidence-based study of the teaching-learning process, provides leadership in this endeavor.

CASTL welcomes contributions from and seeks interaction with scholars in related fields in order to support more far-reaching knowledge networks of
both researchers and practitioners and to encourage consilience among multiple disciplines whose interests relate to and inform our efforts to advance the study of teaching and learning.

Mission and Goals


The Center for Advancing the Study of Teaching
and Learning promotes systematic and intentional inquiry into the teaching-learning process and, through careful and collegial study of learning-centered environments, seeks to advance the understanding and dissemination of evidence-
based study of the teaching-learning process in service of all learners.

To promote its mission, CASTL intentionally pursues the following goals:

• Promote socially just, learning-centered environments that bring excellence and equity
  to all learners;
  
  
• Foster systematic and intentional inquiry into the beliefs that educators hold about educational theory and research and effective practice;
  
  
• Honor research, theory, and practice as legitimate and complementary sources of knowledge regarding the teaching-learning process;
  
  
• Elevate professional learning and educational practice to the level of scholarship;
  
  
• Advance the conceptual framework of leadership as learning;
  
  
• Develop a knowledge network fueled by researchers, theorists and practitioners who contribute to advancing the study of the teaching-learning process;
  
  
• Establish and perpetuate an international community of teacher-scholars representing a variety of teaching and learning environments;
  
  
• Promote and coordinate communication within
  a network of educational institutions and organizations that collaborate in the recruitment and education of teacher-scholars;
  
  
• Create a culture of professional learning based
  on research situated in schools and in other learning environments;
  
  
• Examine and develop methodologies by which
  the teaching-learning process is studied;
  
  
• Advocate for the enhancement of the teaching-learning process in service of all learners; and
  
  
• Share what is learned about the teaching-
  learning process.

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