Policy-making in education is often described as a result of partially conflicting political powers, where readily available solutions are chosen to address urgent, "high profile" needs rather than as a rational and thoughtful choice based upon carefully scrutinized evidence provided by rigorous research (Kingdon, 2010). A number of explanations have been provided for this undesirable state of affairs: 1) Research is a prolonged and well-planned activity whereas policy making often requires immediate solutions to urgent problems in rapidly changing realities; 2) Researchers form their own research questions, and these might not necessarily be helpful to policy-makers; 3) Research findings are often inconclusive;  4) Researchers often fail to phrase their findings in ways that are accessible to policy-makers (Gamoran, 2011).

In order to promote fruitful dialogue between policy-makers and researchers, officials of the Ministry of Education in Israel, and the MOFET Institute, a national institute for research and curriculum development in teacher education, initiated an ongoing collaboration process: Officials present their questions to the Mofet Institute researchers, and both parties decide together whether answers should be sought by a comprehensive review of the current literature or by research groups. These groups are comprised of teacher educators who are experts in the relevant subjects and come from diverse colleges of education in terms of geographic locations as well as sub-groups of the country's population for which the colleges cater. Research groups operate under a tight schedule and hold occasional meetings with officials in order to monitor and help research projects. The results of the different research projects are presented both in academic and professional forums in diverse formats: white papers, seminars, research papers, books, etc.

The present study aims to discover the mutual benefits (both potential and actual) as well as the difficulties faced by both policy makers and researchers as they try to work in collaboration.

Cormack, P. (2011). Reading pedagogy, ‘‘Evidence’’ and education policy: learning from history? Australian Educational Researcher, 38, 133–148. Kingdon, J. W. (2010). Agendas, alternatives, and public policies (2nd Edition). New York: Longman. Gamoran, A. (2011). "From Research to Policy and Practice: White Papers, Policy Briefs, and Other Communication Strategies". Paper presented at the Mofet Institute. Tel- Aviv, Israel. May, 2011.