IES Blog

Institute of Education Sciences

Supporting the Pipeline of Scholars of Color with Research, Training, and Mentorship

In recognition of Black History Month, we interviewed Dr. Tamara Bertrand Jones, an associate professor of higher education in the Department of Educational Leadership and Policy Studies at Florida State University and co-principal investigator of the Partners United for Research Pathways Oriented to Social Justice in Education (PURPOSE) program, funded by the IES Pathways to the Education Sciences Research Training Program. In this blog, Dr. Bertrand Jones discusses her experiences conducting research on the professional experiences of underrepresented populations as well as her work supporting emerging scholars of color.

Tamara Bertrand Jones photoHow has your background and experiences shaped your research on the graduate education and professional experiences of underrepresented populations, particularly Black women, in academia?

My dissertation research centered Black perspectives on cultural competence in evaluation. For the first 10 years of my academic career, I worked as an administrator, primarily in student affairs. When I transitioned from administration to faculty, I extended my research to Black experiences in academia. Microaggressions (such as unsolicited advice) that derailed my productivity and diminished my self-confidence immediately greeted me. For example, I was told that my research would be labeled navel-gazing (excessive self-contemplation) because I was a Black woman studying Black women and that this negative label may present challenges for my career. It took time, lots of positive self-affirmation, and validation from my mentors and close Black women colleagues to silence those voices and walk confidently in my contribution as a scholar and my personal purpose for pursuing an academic career. After these experiences, I doubled down on my commitment to demystify the hidden curriculum in the academy and support emerging scholars by being responsive to their identities, experiences, needs, and aspirations.

What is the PURPOSE training program, and what have you learned from administering PURPOSE?

We created PURPOSE to help develop more underrepresented and minoritized education researchers. To date, we have had seven cohorts of PURPOSE Fellows, totaling more than 80 fellows. The program includes critical discussions about social justice and educational inequities, mentoring, professional development, and service-learning research apprenticeships. During their training, we also encourage fellows to reflect on their own identities in terms of race, gender, and social class among other identities while they develop their individual researcher identities. These experiences culminate in capstone research projects related to social justice in education that fellows develop from inception to dissemination during the fellowship year. Taken together, these experiences foster capacities to conduct meaningful research and provide socialization into the rigors of research and graduate school.

We found that fellows experience socialization into education research in ways that help them 1) develop a researcher-identity, and 2) prepare products that demonstrate strong research potential for graduate school. Our fellows have experienced positive gains in their self-efficacy for carrying out a variety of research skills such as conducting literature reviews and working independently and in teams. We believe our approach to culturally relevant education and research methods and valuing the voices of our diverse fellows and mentors will lead to changes in future teaching and research practices.

Based on your research and experiences, what do you see as the greatest needs to improve the education and professional pathways for Black scholars?

In the over 14 years I have been a faculty member, I recognize that there are myriad ways to be successful in academia while remaining true to who you are. Through my work on early career professionals in partnership with Sisters of the Academy (SOTA), a community of Black women in higher education, I strive to create an environment where emerging scholars are exposed to scholars who represent diverse ways of being in academia. These models can shape emerging scholars’ vision of their future possible selves and help them develop their own pathways that are congruent with who they are. If institutions lack those models in their faculty, I urge leaders to intentionally connect with groups or organizations like SOTA that have the expertise and access to individuals who can serve in those roles from their emerging scholars.

What advice would you give to emerging scholars from underrepresented, minoritized groups that are pursuing a career in education research?

Often emerging scholars from underrepresented, minoritized groups are not encouraged to engage in work that speaks to their soul or can meaningfully impact the communities they serve. As in my experience, underrepresented emerging scholars are often told that doing research on our identity groups or researching issues that these groups experience is limiting, pigeonholing, and too self-reflective. Emerging Black scholars, in particular, are told they must approach their work in ways that are contradictory to their values or diminish their self-concepts. These messages can stunt growth and hinder the ability to identify innovative solutions to education’s most-pressing problems.

Because of this, I encourage all emerging scholars to consider the following reflective questions, guided by my emerging professional development framework—the 5 I’s, to help align their education research careers with how they see themselves, individually and in community.

  • Identity: How does my identity influence my research?
  • Intention: How can I create synergy between my research and scholarship, courses I teach, service I perform, and who I am as a scholar?
  • Implementation: How does my positionality influence my research design choices?
  • Influence: Who needs to know about my work? How can partnership extend the impact of my work?
  • Impact: How can my work be used to create better educational environments for marginalized or minoritized communities, or change education policy, research, or practice in meaningful ways?

This interview blog is part of a larger IES blog series on diversity, equity, inclusion and accessibility (DEIA) in the education sciences. It was produced by Akilah Nelson (akilah.nelson@ed.gov), a program officer within the National Center for Special Education Research.

Creating a Community of Writers

The Predoctoral Interdisciplinary Research Training Program in the Education Sciences was established by IES to increase the number of well-trained PhD students who are prepared to conduct rigorous and relevant education research. IES encourages our predoctoral fellows to develop strong writing skills in addition to subject-matter and methodological expertise. In this guest blog, we asked IES predoctoral fellow, Todd Hall, co-chair of the Black Scholars in Education and Human Development Writing Group at the University of Virginia, to discuss how participating in this writing group has helped his development as an education researcher. Todd, is part of the IES-funded Virginia Education Science Training (VEST) program and studies early childhood education policy as well as school discipline in both early childhood and K-12 settings.

How did you become involved in the Black Scholars in Education and Human Development Writing Group?

I started my PhD in education policy in August 2020. The COVID-19 pandemic made networking and simply making friends awkward. During my first week in Charlottesville, VA, I watched wistfully from my window as a Black person jogged past my house. For me, the jogger represented communities of color at UVA that I did not know how to connect with.

Enter Dr. Edward Scott and Dr. Miray Seward, then students and co-chairs of the Black Scholars in Education and Human Development Writing Group. They sent me a personal email invitation to join the group’s first virtual writing retreat. When I joined the Zoom room, I found the affinity space I was looking for. I connected with graduate students whom I later turned to for informal mentorship, course recommendations, tips on navigating the hidden curriculum of grad school, insights from job market experiences, and examples of successful written proposals. The laughs shared virtually during check-ins between writing blocks helped ward off the pandemic blues.

I resolved to pay it forward, so I began shadowing Edward and Miray. When they graduated, I stepped into a leadership role alongside my co-chair, Sasha Miller-Marshall.

How has participating in the writing group helped you develop as a scholar?

The writing group has reminded me that I am not the only one who experiences writer’s block and has provided me with writing process role models. The professional development sessions we host have been one of the few opportunities that I have found to see faculty expose and reflect on their own writing challenges, from protecting their time for writing to incorporating critical feedback. This provides a unique perspective on the writing process—I often see faculty discuss works in progress, but the format is usually an oral presentation with slides rather than something written.

In the Black Scholars Writing Group sessions, speakers often share candidly about their own process, including writer’s block and how they overcome it. For example, a senior faculty member shared that they used voice memos to process their thoughts when they feel stuck. That disclosure normalized my experience of writer’s block and made me feel comfortable sharing that I write memos on my phone when I feel stuck. Moments like these have provided tools to overcome resistance in my writing process and normalized the experience of strategizing about writing rather than expecting words to flow effortlessly.

The presenters who lead sessions with our group have diverse racial/ethnic backgrounds, but the focus of the group on creating affinity space for Black doctoral and PhD students allows me to be less concerned about stereotype threat. Whereas I am often the only Black person in other rooms, I am never the only Black person in this writing group. That alleviates any concern about being perceived as a token representative of Black people, or worse, as less capable if I choose to share my difficulties. In one session, I was able to unpack with the faculty speaker that a particular piece of writing was difficult because I had not yet answered the simple question of why the work was important. I got to that realization because the speaker modeled vulnerability about their own writing process, and I felt at ease to discuss my own.

How can the broader education research community help graduate student researchers develop as writers?

Where appropriate and feasible, education researchers can share their successful conference proposals, grant applications, budgets, reviewer response letters, and perhaps even dissertation chapters. If it does not make sense to post them publicly, researchers could offer to share materials with graduate students that they meet at speaking engagements, conferences, etc.

Successful models have given me helpful guidance, especially when tackling a new format. Beyond the writing group, I am immensely grateful to the alumni of my IES pre-doctoral fellowship who have provided many of their materials for current students to reference.

What advice can you give other student researchers who wish to further develop their writing skills?

Cultivate authentic relationships with a network of mentors who are willing to share examples of their successful writing and review your work. My advisor is amazing and thorough with her feedback. That said, it has been useful to strategically ask others who bring in complementary perspectives to review my work. For example, my advisor is a quantitative researcher, and I recently proposed a mixed methods study. Researchers who do qualitative and mixed methods work were able to challenge and strengthen the qualitative aspects of my proposal based on their expertise. You might also be applying for opportunities or submitting to journals that other mentors have succeeded with or reviewed for. They may help you anticipate what that audience might be looking for.

In addition, when you receive feedback, do so graciously, weigh it seriously, and ask yourself if there’s a broader piece of constructive criticism to apply to your other writing.


This blog was produced training program officer Katina Stapleton (Katina.Stapleton@ed.gov) and is part of a larger series on the IES research training programs.

Risk and Resilience in Children Experiencing Homelessness

In celebration of National Homeless Youth Awareness Month, Dr. Ann Masten, Regents Professor at the Institute of Child Development, University of Minnesota, reflects on her research with children in families experiencing homelessness, highlighting what inspired her, key findings, and advice for the future. Her research on homelessness has been supported by IES, NSF, NIH, her university, and local foundations. She underscores the power of a resilience lens for research with high-risk families and the vital role of research-practice partnerships.  

What inspired you to study homelessness?

In 1988, the issue of homelessness among children surged onto the front pages of newspapers and magazines as communities were confronted with rapidly growing numbers of unhoused families. That year, Jonathan Kozol published his book, Rachel and her Children: Homeless Families in America, about the desperate lives of families without homes crowded into hotels in New York City. Kozol gave a compelling talk I attended at the University of Minnesota. At the time, I was doing part-time, pro bono clinical work with children at a mental health clinic run by the Wilder Foundation. The foundation president requested that I help them learn about the needs of children and families experiencing homelessness in the Twin Cities.

Digging into the literature as I visited shelters and interviewed school personnel who were faced with the surge of family homelessness, I quickly learned that there was little information to guide educators or service providers. Shelters could barely keep track of the numbers and ages of children in residence each day, and schools were struggling to accommodate the overwhelming needs of kids in emergency shelter.

This search inspired me to launch research that might be helpful. I was deeply moved by the plight of these families who were trying to care for their children without the security of a stable home, income, food, healthcare, or emotional support. I had grown up in a military family, frequently moving and dealing with parental deployment, which was stressful even with adequate resources.

As an early career scholar, I had funding to start new work aligned with my research focus on resilience in child development. In 1989, I initiated my first study of homelessness, surveying parents and their children residing in emergency shelter compared with similar but housed families. Although I knew from the outset that homelessness was not good for children, I also realized it was important to document the risks and resilience of these families.

How has your research on homelessness evolved in the past three decades?

Initially, my research with students and community collaborators was descriptive, focused on discovering the nature of adversities children and parents had faced, variations in how well they were doing, barriers to school access, and what made a positive difference—the protective factors in their lives. Over the years, we learned that children and parents in emergency shelter had much in common with other impoverished families, although they often had faced higher cumulative risk, as well as more acute trauma, and their children had more education issues. Administrative longitudinal data provided strong evidence of academic risk among children identified as homeless, with significantly worse achievement than housed children who qualified for free lunch. Poor attendance was an issue but did not account for the striking range of academic achievement we observed. Importantly, there was ample evidence of resilience: warm, effective parents and sociable, high-achieving children, eager to play and learn.

Research on homelessness aligned with a broader story of risk and resilience in development, revealing the importance of multisystem processes and protections for children as well as the hazards of high adversity in contexts of low resources and structural inequality. Results pointed to three basic intervention strategies: (1) lowering risks and toxic stress exposure, (2) increasing resources for healthy child development, and (3) nurturing resilience at multiple levels in children, their families, schools, and communities.

Given the range of school readiness and achievement of children experiencing homelessness, we focused on malleable protective factors for school success, particularly during the preschool years. Parenting quality and executive function (EF) skills were strong candidates. We tested EF skills that reflect neurocognitive processes involved in goal-directed behavior that are vital to learning. Many of the children in shelters struggled with self-regulation and related learning skills, which predicted how well they did at school, both in the short-term and over time.  

With funding from a local foundation and IES, we developed an intervention to boost EF skills among young highly mobile children. Ready? Set. Go! (RSG) was designed to foster EF skills through practice embedded in routine preschool activities led by teachers, educating parents about brain development and how to encourage EF skills, and training parents and children with games, books, and music. Given family mobility, RSG was intended to be brief, appealing, and easy to implement. Pilot results were promising, indicating appeal to parents and teachers, fidelity of implementation, and encouraging changes in EF skills among the children.

In recent years, I have co-directed the Homework Starts with Home Research Partnership, a “grand challenge” project focused on ending student homelessness with a dedicated group of university, state, and community partners. This project integrates long-term administrative data in order to study effects of housing and other interventions on the educational success of students. Our work has underscored for me the power of collaborative partnerships and integrated data.

What advice do you have for researchers interested in conducting research on homelessness?

Connect with multisystem partners! Homelessness is a complex issue that calls for research-practice partnerships spanning multiple systems and perspectives, including lived experience.  Integrated data systems that include multisystem administrative data are particularly valuable for understanding and following mobile populations. Sign up for updates from Federal and state agencies, as well as NGOs that disseminate research updates about homelessness. And aim for positive goals! Our focus on resilience and positive outcomes as well as risks and adversity was key to engaging families and our collaborators. 


This blog was produced by Haigen Huang (Haigen.Huang@ed.gov), program officer at NCER.

Inspiring Girls to Pursue STEM careers with the Dear Smart Girl Career Exploration Platform

The Department of Education’s Small Business Innovation Research Program (SBIR), which IES administers, funds the research, development, and evaluation of new, commercially viable education technology products. In this guest blog, Abi Olukeye of Smart Girl HQ discusses the inspiration behind her recently completed SBIR project, Dear Smart Girl, and the importance of helping girls envision themselves in STEM Careers.

What is Dear Smart Girl?

Our Dear Smart Girl platform is a learning experience that combines online interactive game-based learning curriculum with offline engaging activity kits and personalized STEM learning recommendations to enable elementary-aged girls achieve STEM career literacy by age 12. Our Dear Smart Girl platform is the only STEM career education platform on the market with an ecosystem of products with a research-driven design featuring age-appropriate, experienced-based informal learning content designed to facilitate STEM discovery, self-efficacy, and fluency for young female-identifying learners.

Through our Dear Smart Girl digital platform, we transform the way girls perceive and engage in STEM learning pathways by providing an innovative multi-stage learning experience.

Learning begins in the whimsical town of Ingenia, where learners are immersed into a digital world that is designed to capture aesthetics and themes that resonate with female-identifying students. Learners begin by selecting a storyline, each of which is associated with a STEM career and features a project-based problem-solving activity. Along the way, students gain new vocabulary and fluency with the subject area being exposed to them. In stage two, learners take their new skills offline and work to complete the real-life version of their game project using our complementary Dear Smart Girl project kit. These two stages of learning combine powerfully to strategically introduce, challenge, and engage young girls in STEM career exploration that builds their confidence and literacy in STEM pathways.

What inspired you to create the Dear Smart Girl platform?

The idea was born out of personal need. I started observing that at about age 3 my daughters were often describing toys and activities as either “boy things” or “girl things.” I was really stunned to see how early biases develop and felt strongly about finding ways to balance out their views. My first instincts were to find more toys and activities that would appeal to them and activities that would expose them broadly. And I fully anticipated that a quick internet search would surface plenty of options. I was so wrong. Not only were there limited options, most of what I found did not appeal to my daughters in terms of type of activity and aesthetics.

Reflecting on my own experience as someone who has a STEM degree and was, at the time, working at a global manufacturing firm leading technical projects, I decided to dive into the research about girls and STEM. I discovered that although women participate equally in the labor force, they only make up 28% of the STEM workforce. In addition, early adolescence tends to be when girls lean away from STEM at a higher rate than their male peers. That inspired me to work with other talented and passionate people to build products and facilitate experiences and help young female-identifying learning achieve STEM career literacy by age 12.

What are the types of STEM careers featured in Dear Smart Girl and why did you choose them?

Our pilot career module is an electrical engineering module, but over the course of the next two years, we are working to add five more game modules featuring chemical science, mechanical engineering, biology, software development and product designer careers. We select careers based on science standards being taught in 4th–7th grade. Our goal is to take topical themes and relate them to their real-world applications while also putting them in the context of the career domains that features the scientific concept and related skills. We also working to align to the National Career Clusters framework, which supports Career Technical Education (CTE) programs. 

What elements of Dear Smart Girl are uniquely tailored to female-identifying students?

We tailor our product to help sustain interest in STEM Career pathways in the following ways.

  • We are intentional about selecting and mapping careers in ways that show real-world relevance. Anecdotally, we find that when learners are excited about what they are building, they are more engaged and motivated to learn the skills needed to accomplish their goal.
  • We optimize our projects to create an experience that is a perfect blend of learning a new technical skill and creative design. According to Microsoft research on closing the STEM gap, 91% of girls describe themselves as creatives. When girls learn about how real-world STEM jobs can be used to help the world, their perception of the creativity and positive impact of STEM careers can more than double.
  • We use beautiful illustrations, colors, and imagery to creative engaging worlds and digital environment rich with representation for diverse female-identifying students.

What advice can you give technology developers who focus on female-identifying students?
For developers working on products designed for female-identifying students, I recommend a collaborative development approach. We co-create every career module we work on with students to get feedback early and often. While it is easy to fall for stereotypical storylines, female-identifying students have diverse needs, interests, and learning styles that should be celebrated with well-designed learning platforms.

What are the next steps for Dear Smart Girl?

We are so excited to have been recently award a phase 2 award to expand and commercialize our career exploration modules. Over next two years, we will develop and launch five additional career modules, expand educator tools, build in extension activities, and launch to CTE programs across the country.


Abi Olukeye is the founder and CEO of Smart Girl HQ, a company dedicated to closing the gender gap for females in the STEM pipeline by increasing the number of positive experiences young girls have with STEM early in their learning journey. Her vision is to create an ecosystem of products that when used together are a powerful catalyst for sustaining long-term engagement in STEM for young girls. Her work has been supported by National Science Foundation and the Department of Education through Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Awards, the NC Idea Foundation, and the Vela Education Fund. Abi is the chair of the board of CSEdResearch.org and a past member of the Computer Science K12 Standards Committee for North Carolina. She holds a bachelor’s degree in computer science from Virginia Tech and MBA from Indiana University. She and her husband live in Charlotte, NC and have two young daughters who greatly inspire her work.

This blog was produced by Katina Stapleton (Katina.Stapleton@ed.gov), co-chair of the IES Diversity Council.

Counting and Listening to Native American Students: Reflections on NIES and its Potential

In honor of Native American Heritage Month, IES is highlighting the National Indian Education Study (NIES) conducted by the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) in partnership with the Office of Indian Education (OIE). Dr. Meredith Larson, who has been with the National Center for Education Research (NCER) since 2010 interviewed Dr. Jamie Deaton about NIES. Dr. Deaton has worked at NCES since 2009 and became the NIES Project Director in April 2010.

What is NIES, and how is it similar or different from other NAEP studies?

NIES describes the condition of education for American Indian and Alaska Native (AI/AN) students in the United States. Since 2005, NCES has administered it in conjunction with the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) state-level assessments in mathematics and reading at grades 4 and 8. The very large NAEP sample allows us to report data for AI/AN students nationally and for various subgroups of AI/AN students. In NIES, students first take either the NAEP mathematics or reading assessment, followed by a NAEP survey questionnaire, and then an NIES survey questionnaire (which emphasizes Native language and culture). Both NAEP and NIES survey questionnaires are also administered to the teachers and school administrators of AI/AN students. You can learn more about the survey design here.

 

 

What are some examples of how have policymakers, practitioners, or researchers used it?

NIES data has been used in Congressional testimony and at the state level. For example, NIES data has been included in past testimonies to the House of Representatives Subcommittee on Interior, Environment and Related Agencies; the House of Representatives Subcommittee on Early Childhood, Elementary, and Secondary Education; and the Senate Committee on Indian Affairs. At the state level, Oregon used NIES data to support a successful request to its state legislature to approve a full-time Indian Education Specialist within the Oregon Department of Education.

We also want to ensure that a variety of educational leaders—especially Native leaders—are aware of the study and can access the results and products. In addition to the online reports, we also produce hard copies to ensure results get to those without easy access to online documents. We help distribute these widely via a Native-owned NIES contractor (currently Tribal Tech, LLC) to Tribal colleges and universities, AI/AN studies programs at colleges and universities, all federal and state recognized tribes, AI/AN focused media, research centers, and other related AI/AN non-profits.

In addition, we want to get the results in the hands of school leaders. For example, all Bureau of Indian Education (BIE) schools serving grades 4 and 8 are in the NIES sample, and all of these schools receive hard copies of NIES reports.

What makes working on NIES study interesting to you?

Building partnerships with Native leaders both within and outside the federal government has been really rewarding. We administer NIES on behalf of the U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Indian Education (OIE) which provides funding for the study; integrates NIES data collection with its work when possible; and serves as a strong partner, advocate, and disseminator for NIES results. NIES is not only conducted in conjunction with the NAEP program but also conducted in conjunction with OIE’s work. Over the years, I have regularly presented to OIE grantees, and this has been a wonderful forum to share more about the study and also draw connections to and learn more about grantee-related work.

For NIES to be successful, it needs to be guided not just by assessment experts, but by Native experts. To this end, NCES established the NIES Technical Review Panel (TRP) made up of individuals with expertise in matters related to the education of AI/AN students. Members oversee the development of the NIES survey questionnaires and guide the planning, drafting, and revision of NIES publications with their ongoing expert consultation. In conjunction with the release of the last two NIES reports, the TRP has also authored a companion document, called  Setting the Context, that provides perspective on how this study fits into the larger sphere of education for AI/AN students. Tribal Tech recruits BIE schools for the study, disseminates study results at conferences focused on AI/AN education (for example, National Indian Education Association Annual Convention & Trade Show), and has established a long-term partnership with a Native-owned printing company (Sault Printing Company Inc.) that helps produce and disseminate NIES-related documents.

What excites you about NIES?

I’m very excited about last year’s release of the 2019 NIES Qualitative Data Companion as a public use data file (available in Excel files on the NIES main page). The data release marked the first time in NIES program history that qualitative survey questions, collected since 2005, became publicly available. Prior to the release, we ensured that all student and teacher responses were reviewed and edited to remove the presence of names or addresses and any other Personal Identifiable Information (PII). My hope is that having an established process for releasing this type of data will be beneficial to other IES data collections. Members of the TRP deserve a lot of credit for continuously advocating for this data. Had the TRP not done so, there was a real possibility that we would have dropped these qualitative questions from future data collections. Instead, we now have a model to follow for getting this data out to the public. We are also working on releasing previous NIES Qualitative Data Companions from earlier NIES administrations too.

From a research perspective, what do these qualitative data provide?

Researchers without a restricted-use data (RUD) license now can access this robust dataset. We recognize that many of our stakeholders live in remote areas and/or have other barriers to accessing the RUD (for example, those not affiliated with an institution). I think for doctoral candidates these data provide an opportunity for a dissertation with data already gathered and accessible for analysis.

There are many different angles to approach this open-ended data. For example, the final question on the NIES student survey is “What else would you like to say about yourself, your school, or about American Indian or Alaska Native people?” I’m curious what researchers would find as key differences when comparing grade 4 responses to grade 8. What are some themes and patterns in student respondents? What is the breakdown between responses that pertain to Native language and culture, and how does this differ across school types, such as public schools run by the states and schools operated through funding from the Bureau of Indian Education?  

Are there other resources for researchers interested in NIES data?

Another public use tool is the NIES Data Explorer available at NDE Core Web (nationsreportcard.gov). This explorer includes a wealth of data from all previous NIES administrations. If you go to the NDE Core Web page, you will find other relevant data explorers available including the Main NAEP, High School Transcript Study, and Long-Term Trend.


This blog was produced by Meredith Larson (Meredith.Larson@ed.gov), research analyst and program officer for postsecondary and adult education, NCER. Individuals or organizations interested in learning about field-initiated research or training grant opportunities to conduct work relevant to Native American/Alaska Native prekindergarten through postsecondary and adult education may contact her for initial technical assistance.