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Program Announcement: Knowledge Utilization Center (CFDA 84.305C)

Program Officer:
Dr. Rebecca Kang McGill-Wilkinson
Telephone: (202) 245-7613
Email: Rebecca.McGill@ed.gov

Education researchers have made enormous strides in studying the impacts of education policies and interventions designed to improve outcomes for students. Despite this accumulation of knowledge, there is pervasive concern that practices shown to have positive effects or improvements in educational outcomes for large numbers of students have not been widely adopted. In FY 2014, the Institute competed a Research and Development (R&D) Center on Knowledge Utilization to explore how and when practitioners use research evidence to make decisions, and how existing education research can be made more relevant and useful to practitioners in state and local education agencies and individual schools. In recognition of the interest in and positive feedback on last year's competition from education researchers and national policymakers, as well as recognition that this issue is not well understood and has received little research attention, the Institute is holding a new competition in FY 2015 for an R&D Center on Knowledge Utilization.

The Institute seeks to create an R&D Center on Knowledge Utilization to conduct a focused program of research that will do the following:

  1. Develop tools for observing and measuring research use in schools.
  2. Illuminate the conditions under which practitioners use research and factors that promote or inhibit research use in schools.
  3. Identify strategies that make research more meaningful to and impactful on education practice.

In addition, the R&D Center on Knowledge Utilization will engage in leadership and outreach activities to:

  1. Demonstrate effective means of knowledge transfer, including interactive meetings and use of technology to foster meaningful exchange among researchers, practitioners, and other stakeholders on how research can best be used to improve school performance and student outcomes.