About
Mission
CASJE's mission is to strengthen Jewish education through the development and use of high-quality applied research. We strive to make research more rigorous, meaningful, and usable by cultivating partnerships, building capacity, and advancing professional learning.
Vision
CASJE envisions a world in which Jewish education research produces meaningful, reliable, and usable evidence that enables Jewish communities to achieve their highest aspirations for Jewish life and learning.
Supporting Jewish Education and Engagement
CASJE seeks to inform and advance Jewish learning and growth in all the places it can happen—not just in classrooms, but also in camps, youth movements, and community programs, as well as in family learning and adult education settings.
CASJE uses applied research to improve Jewish education and enhance Jewish life. We build partnerships among researchers, philanthropists and Jewish communal professionals, fostering collaborations that advance research for practical impact. Our goal is to inform real-world decision-making that can deepen Jewish engagement and improve civic life.
CASJE is a program of the Collaboratory: A Center for Jewish Education at the George Washington University Graduate School of Education and Human Development. Our core operations are supported by generous grants from the Jim Joseph Foundation, Crown Family Philanthropies, and The Diane and Guilford Glazer Foundation.
- What is Applied Research?
Applied research aims to solve practical problems. Researchers and practitioners in a given field conduct research on and apply their findings to a specific issue. The goal of all applied research is to yield “actionable knowledge” to improve practice in that field.
Applied research in general education might focus on the importance of play in children’s learning or how classroom activities can be structured around moral and emotional development goals.
In Jewish education, research that studies the ins and outs of Havruta (pair) learning yields practical pedagogical tools for text study applicable to teachers of all disciplines.
Our Commitment to Knowledge Sharing
Knowledge sharing describes an ongoing process, supported by explicitly designed activities, by which professional knowledge, expertise, evidence, experience and skills are elicited, exchanged and considered to advance the understanding and insight of all participants. The conditions for optimal knowledge exchange require ongoing, respectful relationships and interactions that all parties see as beneficial to their work.
CASJE believes that the deliberate cultivation of knowledge sharing makes it more likely that research will generate reliable, meaningful, and useful information and ideas that can be used both to inform practice and policy and to spark new ways of thinking about challenges and opportunities facing Jewish education.
CASJE brings this orientation to all of our core activities, from defining research agendas and identifying high priority researchable questions, developing studies and instruments, engaging stakeholders across research cycle, producing and communicating findings, facilitating meaning-making relevant in local contexts, providing advanced training to researchers, and supporting research use in practice and policy.
Guiding Principles
CASJE works toward achieving our vision and implementing our mission of improving the quality of knowledge that guides educational practice and policy by:
Identifying and addressing impactful questions of practice and policy
Facilitating research in support of evidence-informed decision making rooted in empirical data
Integrating diverse expertise from within Jewish education, general education and adjacent fields
Developing interdisciplinary approaches to applied research by supporting collaboration across institutions, and building a shared evidence base
Building the capacity of Jewish educational institutions to use applied research, working to build a culture of continuous improvement across the field
History of CASJE
CASJE began in 2011 as a collaboration between the Stanford Graduate School of Education, the AVI CHAI Foundation and Jim Joseph Foundation, and Rosov Consulting. Today CASJE is housed at the George Washington University Graduate School of Education and Human Development. Through a series of conferences and working groups that have convened a wide array of institutions and individuals, we have helped to lay the groundwork for applied research in key areas of the field.
Learn More About CASJE
Meet our leadership team comprised of distinguished professionals and researchers.
Meet the CASJE staff and our affiliated faculty, staff, and partners.
Read testimonials from program participants and advisory board members.