Inside IES Research

Notes from NCER & NCSER

Encouraging the Use of LGBTQI+ Education Research Data

Until recently, limited data existed in education research focused on the LGBTQI+ community and their experiences. As this area of interest continues to grow, education researchers are learning how to effectively collect these data, interpret their implications, and use them to help improve the educational outcomes of LGBTQI+ identifying students. In this blog post, we review current federal recommendations for data collection and encourage researchers to submit FY 2024 applications focused on the educational experiences and outcomes of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer, and Intersex (LGBTQI+) identifying students.

Collecting Data on Sexual Orientation and Gender Identities

In January 2023, the Office of the Chief Statistician of the United States released a report with recommendations on how to effectively design federal statistics surveys to account for sexual orientation and gender identities (SOGI). While this report is for a federal audience, the recommendations are relevant and useful for education researchers who wish to measure the identities and experiences of those in the LGBTQI+ community. Some suggestions include—

  • Provide multiple options for sexual orientation identification (for example, gay/lesbian, straight, bisexual, use other term)
  • Provide a two-question set in order to measure gender identity—one asking for sex assigned at birth, and one for current self-identification
  • Provide write-in response and multiple-response options for SOGI-related questions
  • Allow respondents to proceed through the survey if they choose not to answer unless answers to any of these items are critical for data collection

Education researchers looking to incorporate SOGI data into their studies can also use existing SOGI data collected by the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) to support their research. A new NCES blog outlines the studies that collect SOGI information and outlines some initial findings from that data.

Funding Opportunities for Research to Improve Outcomes of LGBTQI+ students

In alignment with the SEER Equity Standard, IES encourages researchers to submit applications to the FY 2024 research grant competitions that support the academic and social behavioral outcomes of students who identify as LGBTQI+. IES is especially interested in research proposals that involve—

  • Describing the educational experiences and outcomes of LGBTQI+ students
  • Creating safe and inclusive learning environments that support the needs of all LGBTQI+ students.
  • Identifying promising practices for school-based health services and supports, especially mental health services, that are accessible to and supportive of LGBTQI+ students
  • Identifying systems-level approaches that reduce barriers to accessing and participating in high quality learning environments for LGBTQI+ students

Check out our funding opportunities page for more information about our FY 2024 requests for applications. If you have specific questions about the appropriateness of your research for a specific FY 2024 research competition, please contact the relevant program officer listed in the request for applications.


This blog is part of a 3-part Inside IES Research blog series on sexual orientation and gender identity in education research in observance of Pride month. The other posts discuss the feedback from the IES LGBTQI+ Listening and Learning session and the first ever learning game featuring a canonically nonbinary character.

This blog was produced by Virtual Student Federal Service intern Audrey Im with feedback from IES program officers Katina Stapleton (NCER - Katina.Stapleton@ed.gov) and Katherine Taylor (NCSER - Katherine.Taylor@ed.gov) and NCES project officers Elise Christopher (Elise.Christopher@ed.gov) and Maura Spiegelman (Maura.Spiegelman@ed.gov).

Leveraging the Voices of Persons with Disabilities in Education Research

A woman uses sign language during a virtual conference

On April 25, 2022, the IES research centers held a listening session focused on researchers with disabilities. The purpose of the session was for participants to share their experiences in becoming education researchers and applying for/carrying out research grants as well as to offer suggestions for increasing the participation of individuals with disabilities in IES grant programs. Participants included researchers from institutes of higher education and non-profit research agencies, researchers in training, higher education administrators and staff, and staff from the Department of Education and other federal funding agencies. The discussion centered around three questions. Below is a summary of the key themes that participants highlighted in response to each question.

How has your disability, in conjunction with other intersecting identities, shaped your experiences as a researcher?

Disability experiences can shape research careers. Participants described an evolving sense of identity and how that impacts their research trajectories. For example, one participant described how conducting disability research helped them recognize their own experiences with mental illness, attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder, and autism: “That shifting understanding of my own identities […] has been something that informs my own thinking about the research and my own paths.”

Ableism affects many researchers with disabilities. Several participants mentioned experiencing ableism, a form of discrimination against people with disabilities based on the belief that typical abilities are superior. As one participant with a physical disability explained, “There's a variation in productivity, and it's been very hard finding a community of other academics because support and advice for graduate students, for example, all presume able body.” Participants also noted that ableism is particularly salient for academics with disabilities who are marginalized in other ways as well (for instance, based on their race or ethnicity, gender identity, and/or sexual orientation). 

Accommodations for researchers with disabilities are inadequate. Participants noted, “I’ve had multiple situations where the accessibility office just does not know how to handle disabled graduate students outside of classes” and “these same issues can follow researchers to the faculty stage of their careers, only then they must work with HR [human resources], yet another entity who is unfamiliar with how to accommodate faculty disability-related requests.” Another participant emphasized how this applies to people whose disabilities are not visible, explaining that individuals may attempt to hide their disabilities, but then they may not find out about accommodations that would have been available to them; on the other hand, “the accommodations they receive don't really help them to be productive and attain their scholarly research expectations that they have.”

Participants feel a responsibility toward people with disabilities in their research. For example, one participant shared that, “As a deaf woman of color, I feel the responsibility to conduct research that elevates and addresses significant issues of need in the community. I also feel the need to protect the community from hearing researchers that conduct research based on what they determine to be their definition of the quality of life.”

How has your disability, in conjunction with other intersecting identities, impacted your experiences applying for and conducting an IES research grant?

Having a disability can be an asset to research. As one participant described, “I do believe that having this learning disability myself has impacted the way that I conceptualize mathematical thinking and understand the ways that other people might conceptualize mathematical thinking.” Participants also discussed the importance of involving researchers with disabilities in research focused on individuals with disabilities. As one participant stated, “I feel that it's very important to bring that insider's view to people about the process of learning how to read, and that's one big gap in literacy [research] – a lot of people have not done the research on deaf children and their development, and the people doing that are not deaf themselves, so they don't have that firsthand experience, that understanding.”  

IES grant timelines are not always suited for researchers with disabilities. As one participant noted, “Disability is fluid, it's not always the same… and there can be difficulty in predicting certain things, and even in just figuring out what kind of things I needed to be able to do the research.” Another participant added, “Being able to get grants, support, etc. is all presumed upon working on a non-sick person's timeline and standard of productivity.”

The IES peer review process may present a barrier to certain types of research on learners with disabilities. For example, one deaf participant was concerned about peer reviewers being able to review their proposal focused on American Sign Language with impartiality, given as they noted, “a strong audio-centric bias within the field.” Another participant shared that, “Most of my attempts to submit applications have favored individuals who conduct RCTs [randomized controlled trials] or other more quantitative focused research. As a researcher with a disability who believes the voices need to be heard/represented, I find the IES focus for grants to be limiting.”

Requests for applications (RFAs) and federal register notices should be more accessible. For instance, RFAs in PDF format can be difficult for people with visual impairments to take notes in and navigate with screen readers. Because of varying needs and preferences, participants recommended making application-related documents available in multiple formats.

How can IES build the research capacity of students, researchers, and organizations from various disability communities?

Participants emphasized a need for more researchers with disabilities to receive grants, which in turn would provide more opportunities for students with disabilities to be involved in research. According to one participant, “I have deaf students, and I would like to pull them into the field as well and have them become experienced researchers.” Increasing capacity in the field would also involve people with disabilities serving on peer review panels. As one participant noted, “People with disabilities absolutely need to be part of that [review] process, and definitely need to be tied to the disability group that the content is for.”

Participants suggested IES develop training and mentorship programs for researchers with disabilities. IES could also consider providing diversity supplements like the National Institutes of Health to fund postdoctoral positions on active grants. Other suggestions for IES included checking for biased assumptions in RFAs and ensuring the language empowers researchers who experience disabilities.

IES has taken steps to respond this feedback, including:

This blog was authored by Katherine Taylor (Katherine.Taylor@ed.gov), NCSER program officer, with feedback from IES program officers Katina Stapleton (Katina.Stapleton@ed.gov) and Akilah Nelson (Akilah.Nelson@ed.gov). Thematic coding of the listening session transcript was completed by IES interns, Kaitlynn Fraze and Alysa Conway, with support from Katherine Taylor.  

Navigating LGBTQI+ Research: Where We Are and Where We Are Headed

In June 2022, NCER and NCSER hosted a virtual listening session, “Leveraging LGBTQI+ Voices in Education Research.” After a brief introduction from the Office of Civil Rights on Title IX and its relevance to protecting against sex and gender discrimination within schools and LGBTQI+ resources for students, seven guest panelists discussed the history of LGBTQI+ research, challenges, and ways forward. This blog provides a summary of the discussion. 

Historical Perspectives on LGBTQI+ Education Research 

Panelists shared their perspectives on the history of LGBTQI+ education research and made several important points. They noted that early LGBTQI+ education research was not situated in schools. Rather, as one panelist recalled, “Research on queer issues and education began as legal and historical research because of the politics of securing IRB both at your own institution and also schools.” Early research also focused heavily on negative experiences of queer and trans youth, such as bullying. “It is certainly important [to] interrupt homophobic bullying in schools, but it is troubling that queer and trans victimhood has become the most pervasive trope for recognizing bodies in schools,” stated a panelist, before urging the audience to change the narrative from victimhood to agency.  

In 2001, GLSEN started their biannual National School Climate Survey, which asks LGBTQI+ students about their experiences of discrimination and school-based supports. Panelists highlighted this as a pivotal moment in collecting data on these students and their experiences in school.   

Challenges in Conducting LGBTQI+ Education Research 

Panelists also shared challenges in conducting education research with LGBTQI+ students:

  • Geography. Although there is a need to conduct research in various regions across the United States to account for different political climates and other geographical factors, anti-LGBTQI+ policies present an obstacle to doing so in certain states.
  • Getting consent from parents and districts. “In general, districts have moved from giving you an outright no, to the passive-aggressive drown-you-in-paperwork,” noted one panelist. “My work has decidedly been in out-of-school places,” another panelist agreed, “because it’s easier to ask questions around queer and trans youth agency.”  
  • Career-related barriers. Panelists cited difficulties in finding mentors and funding to engage in this research. One panelist noted, “There's also the challenge of key scholars and gate keepers who misunderstand queer scholarship,” which can make it difficult to receive funding or get published.  

Future directions for LGBTQI+ education research  

Panelists discussed several areas the field should attend to in order to ensure the future of high-quality education research on LGBTQI+ learners.  

Responsible and Respectful Data Collection and Analysis

As identities are becoming more diverse and nuanced, it is important for researchers to prioritize collecting and analyzing data in ways that are inclusive and respectful of these varied and intersecting identities. As stated by one panelist, “We need to be able to design tests and validate forms of measuring sexuality, especially for younger queer and trans youth, not for the sake of measuring constructs, but because it's imperative at this time that we're able to use information to inform policy.”  

Using a report from the National Academy of Sciences as a foundation, panelists recommended asking open-ended questions that allow individuals to give detailed explanations and providing sliding scales for participants to place themselves along spectrums. When a categorical question is needed, panelists recommended providing multiple options that go beyond the binary and providing an explanation for the categorical question (for example, “Oftentimes, we have to create categories to do the work that we do, can you please tell us which of these options best describes your sexual orientation?”).  

Participants also discussed the importance of not collapsing data across categories and attending to intersecting identities, including gender identity, sexual orientation, culture, and race/ethnicity, to better understand experiences. “When those nuances are overlooked or erased,” one panelist remarked, “it becomes impossible to understand the LGBTQI+ community or the public health interventions that would effectively meet the needs of each and every LGBTQI+ young person, no matter their identity.” 

Expanded Theories and Approaches

Panelists emphasized the need for an understanding and acceptance of less traditional theories and methods. One panelist stated, “We need to recognize the value of projects that are informed by queer theory, a transtheoretical informed perspective, or radical feminism… to expand what we know about LGBTQI+ experiences in schools.” In addition to quantitative methods, the panelists expressed a need for more qualitative and mixed methods studies and participatory action research.  

Capacity Building

A few panelists advocated for expanded researcher training to ensure future researchers “are adept in qualitative, quantitative and mixed method research techniques aimed at producing research that will then provide rich, sound, and respected information and data that can really impact LGBTQI+ issues.” Participants also recommended increasing the diversity of researchers conducting studies. “As we're thinking about creating a community of scholars, we must include scholars who are both members of the LGBTQI+ community as well as outside of the community,” said one panelist. 


This blog is part of a 3-part blog series on sexual orientation and gender identity in education research in observance of Pride month. The other posts discuss the development of Time Tails, the first ever learning game featuring a canonically nonbinary character, and encourage the use of LGBTQI+ education research data.  

This blog was produced by Virtual Student Federal Service intern Audrey Im with feedback from IES program officers Katina Stapleton (NCER - Katina.Stapleton@ed.gov), Katherine Taylor (NCSER - Katherine.Taylor@ed.gov), James Benson (NCER - James.Benson@ed.gov), and NCES project officers Elise Christopher (Elise.Christopher@ed.gov) and Maura Spiegelman (Maura.Spiegelman@ed.gov).  

Lasting Lessons from my IES Predoctoral Interdisciplinary Research Training Fellowship

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. In honor of the IES 20th Anniversary, we asked Dr. Shayne Piasta, our first IES Outstanding Predoctoral Award Winner, to discuss the impact of her IES fellowship on her career as a reading researcher.

 

The IES predoctoral fellowship supported me and my research career in so many ways. One profound influence stemmed from its interdisciplinary nature. My training program focused on reading and operated at the intersection of psychology and education, with mentors and research experiences spanning these and other disciplines. I am still realizing how fortunate I was to benefit from this program and how it has influenced my scholarly career.

In taking education, policy, and psychology courses, I witnessed different approaches and research methods—sometimes overlapping or complementary and sometimes contradictory. As an undergraduate psychology major, I initially took issue with the non-causal methods in a program and policy evaluation course and did not fully understand the contribution of assorted qualitative approaches featured in many education courses. Yet being exposed to these different ways of thinking and researching made me a better scholar. It forced me to wrestle with foundational issues in education research, identify my own position as a researcher, and—with help from training program mentors—realize the benefits and limitations of various research methods.

The ability to communicate with an array of education scholars and stakeholders has proved invaluable. My fellow trainees included former teachers and principals seeking reading education and educational leadership doctorates as well as those pursuing clinical, development, and cognitive psychology degrees. Many of the psychology trainees had worked with children in schools, summer camps, or clinical settings. Talking with these peers, along with program faculty, broadened my perspectives on educational topics and enhanced my understanding of the complexity of education systems. Sharing perspectives and experiences also helped me understand the different communication styles—and vocabulary—various stakeholders use. As a result, I learned to connect with all those invested in improving reading outcomes for children and to write for multiple audiences. This also led to my first partnership with a local Tallahassee school and my very first (very small) grant.

I attribute my faculty position at The Ohio State University (OSU) to the interdisciplinary mindset that my training instilled. Back when I was initially applying to graduate school, I had noted the multiple disciplines contributing to reading scholarship. Some of the researchers I admired and hoped to work with were clinical, cognitive, educational, or school psychologists. Others were in educational leadership, communication/speech-language pathology, elementary/reading education, or special education.

Both the IES training program and subsequent position at OSU supported network building and ensuing collaborative research projects. Travel funding as a graduate student allowed me to attend various conferences, where program faculty generously introduced me and my cohort to the multidisciplinary “who’s who” of reading scholarship. I was awestruck being in the same room as prominent senior scholars, never mind interacting with them. As a faculty member in a Department of Teaching and Learning, I continue to interact with colleagues and students from a variety of education-related backgrounds and perspectives. It is through contributing to this department and guiding preservice teachers and budding education scholars that I believe I am achieving my impact.

In addition to interacting with senior scholars, these opportunities also allowed me to network with graduate and postgraduate students, who are now my colleagues, peers, collaborators, and friends. Together, we have implemented interdisciplinary grants and written manuscripts. We have put together conference symposia and established a multidisciplinary organization for supporting women- and non-binary-identifying education scholars across disciplines (POWER; Providing Opportunities for Women in Education Research). We have formed writing and accountability groups and helped each other navigate our careers. These relationships—along with others built during my time at OSU—continue to support and sustain me, and my scholarly trajectory would likely have been very different without them.

Through these varied experiences, I learned how to administer assessments to children and follow them over time, develop family and teacher surveys, conduct and reliably code classroom observations, manage and analyze longitudinal and multilevel data, and conduct and write grants to fund research projects that answered different questions using different designs. I am proud that to date I have collaborated on exploration, development, efficacy, replication, effectiveness, and measurement research projects. In working across projects, I also witnessed the different ways that faculty engage in leadership, mentoring, and lab/project management. This provided the foundation for the culture, structure, and processes of my own Early Literacy and Learning Lab (EL3).

As I progress in my career, I am cognizant of these and many other affordances of my training. A continuing goal of mine is to try to recreate these opportunities for students and early career scholars. Our EL3 team is multidisciplinary—investigators, staff, students, and postdoctoral scholars have backgrounds in elementary and early childhood education, psychology, measurement and statistics, speech-hearing sciences, special education, policy, and more. We engage in interdisciplinary research projects that engage internal and external colleagues from similarly varied backgrounds, involve partnerships with local early childhood organizations and elementary schools, and employ an array of quantitative, mixed, and multiple methods approaches.

As a lab, we work to create a positive, collaborative community in which varied perspectives and disagreement are welcome and viewed as discussion opportunities. This is epitomized in one current project, in which we jokingly but proudly announced “I dissent!” when offering alternative viewpoints (and whose team members will soon be receiving t-shirts with this phrase).

Through my research, teaching, and service, I strive to continually improve in supporting students as they learn of different research methods, experience on different research projects, and write for different audiences. I lean on my OSU colleagues and professional network to assist students seeking out multiple mentors. I hope I am as generous as my own mentors were in facilitating conference networking and other opportunities. In these ways, I hope that I can pay forward all that I gained through my IES fellowship to the next generation of educational researchers.


Dr. Shayne Piasta was an IES predoctoral fellow in the Florida State University Predoctoral Interdisciplinary Research Training program. She is currently professor of reading and literacy in early and middle childhood within the College of Education and Human Ecology at The Ohio State University. She is also a faculty associate for the Crane Center for Early Childhood Research and Policy. Her research focuses on early literacy development and how it is best supported during preschool and elementary years.

In addition to receiving the Outstanding Predoctoral Fellow award from IES, Dr. Piasta has received the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers and the Dina Feitelson Research Award from the International Reading Association.

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.

Inspiring and Teaching Girls to Code with Time Tails

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. Time Tails is an online game intended to prepare middle and high school students for success in postsecondary education and career pathways in computer science. The game, which introduces students to coding within the context of computer game design, was developed as part of the SBIR project Coding Bridge: Bridging Computer Science for Girls. In this interview blog, game developers Grace Collins and Carrie Linden of Liminal eSports (now called Snowbright Studio) discuss Time Tails and the importance of inspiring female-identifying students to code.   

 

 

What is Time Tails?

Carrie:

Time Tails is a series of digital games funded by the U.S. Department of Education and the Tides Foundation to help provide learners of all ages with an entry point into learning game design. Each episode transports you to a different point in history, where you help Ari and Zoe (two rad cartoon cats from the 1980s) fix glitches in history while also learning and practicing 3D game development and game design skills. The games are packed full of 80s’ puns, humor, references to salmon (it is a game about cats, after all), and story, while also encouraging players to learn about some amazing folx that sometimes get left out of history class textbooks.

Grace:

For me, Time Tails is a tool. It’s that missing bridge. Imagine you have a student who is interested in design who has been playing around in Scratch for years. When you show them Unity or Unreal game engines (popular game architectures), they may balk at the complexity of them. Time Tails breaks down those complex interfaces into digestible components that gives students the confidence and interest in making the jump across the gap. We’re continuing to release new Time Tails episodes every six months or so, adding new historical periods and new technical concepts. 

Thanks to our partnership with Unity, we’ve also been able to create an entire year’s curriculum for AP Computer Science Principles aligned to College Board’s standards and the International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE) standards.

What inspired you to create Time Tails?

Grace:

I was teaching computer science at an all-girls school in Cleveland, and the lack of resources for my students was just painfully obvious. There are a lot of generic coding resources, but when I went looking for something that could creatively inspire them and also lay the foundation for a career in game development or real-time 3D development, I was always coming up short.

Some of the first iterations of Time Tails were done right there in my classroom as I asked my students what they cared about (underrepresented female and LGBTQ+ figures in history), what they liked (cats), and even how different colors make them more or less likely to engage with learning content. When learning software pops up and it’s all steel gray and black, my students would look at it and say, “That looks like it’s for my brother.” They knew, and we know too, who the audience is for some of these tools out there. Time Tails tries to do all of that differently.

Carrie:

When you look at data on who is currently working in the computer science and game development industries, you will find that men are overwhelmingly the ones with active roles in the field. When we looked at where these drop off points were for girls in computer science career pathways, we found some interesting things. Girls were often leaving coding and computer science before they made it to high school, and most schools offered little in computer science and coding instruction during that gap between entry level software (like Scratch) and full game development platforms (like Unity). There was clearly a need for something to bridge that gap between tools used by younger kids and professional developers. There was also a need for those tools to be welcoming to female identifying and gender diverse youth as they are the ones falling out of the career.

What elements of Time Tails are uniquely tailored to female-identifying students? 

Carrie:

We decided to build Time Tails around narrative. As you progress, you get pulled into the written story and learn more about our feline heroes Ari and Zoe along with the people that they are helping. 

Humor, color, and charm also all tested well with our target audience compared to the typically dry YouTube tutorials and guides that you see out there that covers similar material. We packed our game full of ’80s puns and silly jokes, seasonal allergies (relatable), and made sure that each level was filled with colorful art and adorable characters. More often than not, these characters are strong women from history whose stories don't frequently make it into the textbooks. Our leading cats are female identifying and nonbinary, making Time Tails the first ever learning game featuring a canonically nonbinary character.

Grace:

It can be hard sometimes reading interpretations of our work. Adults will come in saying that the game looks too young or too childish. They want it to be more mature. They want darker colors and a more serious take. We can’t speak for everyone, but when we tested this game, that’s just not what teen girls wanted. They already had a lot of anxiety about getting into computer science in the first place. They’re VERY aware that it’s a masculine dominated field. They need that entry point that says it’s okay to be silly. They need to see others like themselves throughout history making waves. It’s been really heart-warming to see teens playing it, and even more so when their parent sits down with them to explain all of the 80s’ references. Those have been great moments as we’ve been out there testing this game.

What advice can you give other game developers who focus on female-identifying students?

Carrie:

Representation matters. If you can showcase the work that female-identifying folx are doing in the games industry, then you really should. Too often we see the tech and games industry primarily focusing on the women working (super important!) community management roles, but we also need to see highlights of the work done by female identifying developers, writers, quality assurance staff, producers, and more. Highlight all the roles and not just the ones that the industry has already decided are a “good fit” for women in tech and games. 

Grace:

My main advice to any developer is to involve your audience early and often. Have teens give you feedback on art, characters, concepts, everything. And don’t be afraid to see that those teens don’t agree. Be bold and brave in serving the students that you are trying to reach. Stay true to your vision and your audience.

What are the next steps for Time Tails and Snowbright Studio?

Carrie:

Time Tails is currently available on Steam. One purchase gets you access to all current episodes along with additional episodes releasing every six months or so. We are working with our partner, FableVision, to publish a version that allows for classroom licensing on their FableVision Games platform as well.

Grace:

Snowbright is also very active in the tabletop game industry, publishing cozy mystery role-playing games (RPGs) as well as card and board games. Our most recent Cozy Companion magazine actually took Ari and Zoe on a brand-new adventure to 1966 West Virginia as they learned about pollinators and cryptids in a mini-tabletop RPG.


Grace Collins (they/them) is the Founder/CEO of Snowbright Studio, a Cleveland-based LGBTBE certified game studio dedicated to publishing heartwarming games and experiences. Grace previously led games and education policy at the US Department of Education and later coordinated federal game policy across the executive branch. Prior to serving at the Department, they managed and developed educational game projects at the Smithsonian Institution. Grace has taught computer science and game design at multiple levels and was profiled by the Associated Press for founding the first esports team in the nation at an all-girls’ high school.

Carrie Linden (she/they) is the Communications Manager at Snowbright Studio, handling social media, websites, and the creation of official copy for the organization. Carrie has a Master’s in Education and seven years of experience teaching in LGBTQ+ friendly public-school programs and has her Certificate of Esports Management from UC Irvine. Carrie is an active member in the gaming and content creation community.

This blog is part of a 3-part Inside IES Research blog series on sexual orientation and gender identity in education research in observance of Pride month. The other posts discuss the feedback from the IES LGBTQI+ Listening and Learning session and encourage researchers to submit FY 2024 applications focused on the educational experiences and outcomes of LGBTQI+ identifying students.

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