Inside IES Research

The Institute of Education Sciences Small Business Innovation Research program (ED/IES SBIR) funds entrepreneurial developers to create the next generation of education technology for students, teachers, and administrators in general and special education. The program emphasizes an iterative research and development process and pilot studies to evaluate the feasibility, usability, and promise of new products to improve educational outcomes. The program also focuses on commercialization after development is complete, so that the products can reach schools and be sustained over time.

In recent years, millions of students in tens of thousands of schools around the country have used technologies developed through ED/IES SBIR. And in the past four months, about one million students and teachers used the technologies for remote teaching and learning, as many ED/IES SBIR-supported developers made their products available at no cost in response to the COVID-19 pandemic and the closure of schools.

ED/IES SBIR Announces its 2020 Awards

This week, ED/IES SBIR announced the results of its 2020 award competition. Of the 22 new awards, 16 are for prototype development and 6 are for full-scale development. IES also announced two additional awards through a special topic solicitation in postsecondary education. Read about these awards here.

Each of the new awards supports a project to develop a product to personalize the student learning experience or generate information that educators can use to guide practice.

Most of the projects are developing a software component (for example, algorithms, artificial intelligence, machine Learning, or natural language processing) that continually adjusts the difficulty of content, provides prompts to support individual students if support is needed, or generates real-time actionable information for educators to track student progress and adjust instruction accordingly. Other projects are developing technologies to promote student learning through self-directed, hands-on, simulated, and immersive experiences. If the future of education includes a blend of in-class and remote learning due to public health crises, or for whatever reasons, technologies such as these will be ready to keep the learning going.

The projects address different ages of students and content areas.

In science, LightHaus is fully developing a virtual reality (VR) intervention for students to explore plant heredity; LightUp is fully developing an augmented reality (AR) app for students to perform hands-on physical science investigations with their own on-device camera; and Myriad Sensors is developing a prototype artificial intelligence formative assessment system that generates feedback in real time as students do hands-on laboratory experiments.

In math, Muzology is creating a prototype for students to create music videos to learn algebra, and Teachley is creating a prototype transmedia kit with videos, comics, and pictures to enhance teaching and learning of hard to learn concepts.

In engineering and computer science, Parametric Studios is fully developing an augmented reality puzzle game for early learners, and Liminal eSports, Makefully, and Beach Day Studios are creating prototype components that each provide feedback to students as they engage in activities to learn to code.

In English Language Arts, Analytic Measures and Hoogalit are each employing natural language processing to develop new prototypes to facilitate speech acquisition, and Learning Ovations is developing a prototype data engine to make recommendations for what individual children should read.

For English learners, KooApps is developing an artificial intelligence prototype to support vocabulary acquisition, and Kings Peak Technologies is employing machine learning to generate passages that blend English and Spanish words together to improve reading comprehension.

For early learners, Cognitive Toybox is fully developing an observation and game-based school readiness assessment.

For postsecondary students, Hats & Ladders is fully developing a social skills game to foster career readiness skills.

In special education, Attainment Company is developing a prototype to support student’s self-management, and Alchemie is developing a prototype of an augmented reality science experience for visually impaired students.

To support school administrators and teachers, LearnPlatform is fully developing a dashboard that generates reports with insights for teachers to implement education technology interventions, and Zuni Learning Tree, Teachley and LiveSchool are developing prototype dashboards to organize and present results on student progress and performance in real time.

Stay tuned for updates on Twitter and Facebook as IES continues to support innovative forms of technology.

Written by Edward Metz (Edward.Metz@ed.gov), Program Manager, ED/IES SBIR

Given the many challenges that this year has brought, including the difficulties and uncertainties due to the COVID-19 pandemic, IES is providing different resources and options to assist applicants as they begin preparing their applications. To ensure that program officers can focus their time on project-specific questions, applicants should review these resources first before seeking individual feedback.

First, have a copy of the documents that are needed to submit a proposal. Download a copy of the relevant request for applications (RFA) and the IES Application Submission Guide. This page has PDFs of these documents: https://ies.ed.gov/funding/21rfas.asp. Also, download the application package (search for CFDA 84.305) from https://grants.gov/. Contact Grants.gov (1-800-518-4726; support@grants.gov) if you need help with your electronic grant submission.

Next, take advantage of our digital technical assistance options.

• On-demand webinars. These pre-recorded webinars answer questions about the grant competitions, how to apply, and how to prepare a strong application. You can access them here: https://ies.ed.gov/funding/webinars/.  

• Virtual office hours. This year, we will host a series of drop-in hours during which a program officer will answer questions and give technical assistance. These office hours will help determine which competition or project type is the best fit and also understand some of the requirements and recommendations in the RFAs. Please see the schedule below along with the call-in information. This information is also posted here.

• Cost analysis/Cost-effectiveness analysis. Many RFAs require a cost analysis plan, and some also require a cost effectiveness plan.  Please refer to our list of resources for developing these plans: https://ies.ed.gov/seer/cost_analysis.asp.

• General resources for researchers: IES has a drawn together links to various resources it has sponsored on this webpage: https://ies.ed.gov/resourcesforresearchers.asp.

Finally, please make sure that you attend to the application due dates: https://ies.ed.gov/funding/futureComp.asp because IES does not accept late applications.

Virtual Office Hours

Staff from the research centers will host hour-long drop-in virtual sessions to provide technical assistance around particular competitions or research project types or for general purposes. Applicants are encouraged to join in the discussion and ask questions. These sessions are especially helpful if you are unsure of which competition or project type is the best match for you or if you are unclear on any changes to the requirements or recommendations. Below is a list of the current sessions and their topics. Please attend as many sessions as you would like.

All office hours will use the same call-in details. The program officer will allow participants into the meeting from the “lobby” at the beginning. We recommend you do not use video so that there is sufficient bandwidth. All times are shown in Eastern Standard time.

Join Microsoft Teams Meeting

+1 202-991-0393   United States, Washington DC (Toll)

Conference ID: 915 412 787#

If you would like to request accommodations (e.g., TTY), please send an email to NCER.Commissioner@ed.gov with this request as soon as possible.

You may have to download a free mobile application to use Microsoft Teams if you want the full audio and visual experience from your phone. Clicking on the linked “Join” hyperlink below should prompt you to do this. You can also refer to this article for information: https://support.microsoft.com/en-gb/office/set-up-your-teams-mobile-apps-1ba8dce3-1122-47f4-8db6-00a4f93117e8

Spring 2020 has been a season of upheaval for students and educational institutions across the country. Just when the conditions around the COVID-19 pandemic began to improve, the longstanding symptoms of a different wave of distress resurfaced. We are seeing and experiencing the fear, distrust, and confusion that are the result of systemic racism and bigotry. For education stakeholders, both the COVID-19 pandemic and the civil unrest unfolding across the country accentuate the systemic inequities in access, opportunities, resources, and outcomes that continue to exist in education.

IES acknowledges these inequities and is supporting rigorous research that is helping to identify, measure, and address persistent disparities in education.

In January (back when large gatherings were a thing), IES hosted its Annual Principal Investigator’s (PI) Meeting with the theme of Closing the Gaps for All Learners. The theme underscored IES's objective of supporting research that improves equity in education access and outcomes. Presentations from IES-funded projects focusing on diversity, equity, and inclusion were included throughout the meeting and can be found here. In addition, below are highlights of several IES-funded studies that are exploring, developing, or evaluating programs, practices, and policies that education stakeholders can implement to help reduce bias and inequities in schools.

• Project ReACT: Neutralizing the Effects of Implicit Bias on Racial Disproportionality in School Discipline—The purpose of this project is to develop a professional development intervention (ReACT) to reduce racial/ethnic disproportionality in school discipline and special education referrals.

• MERC School-Based Action Research Team Professional Development Model to Support the Use of Culturally Responsive Teaching Practices that Impact Student Learning—The goal of this project is to develop a teacher professional development model for culturally responsive teaching (CRT) —a networked School-Based Action Research Team (SBART) model. More information can be found on their project website.

• The Men of Color College Achievement (MoCCA) Project - This project addresses the problem of low completion rates for men of color at community colleges through an intervention that provides incoming male students of color with a culturally relevant student success course and adult mentors. In partnership with the Community College of Baltimore County, the team is engaged in program development, qualitative data collections to understand student perspectives, and an evaluation of the success course/mentorship intervention. This project is part of the College Completion Network and posts resources for supporting men of color here.

• Identifying Discrete and Malleable Indicators of Culturally Responsive Instruction and Discipline—The purpose of this project is to use the culturally responsive practices (CRP) framework from a promising intervention, Double Check, to define and specify discrete indicators of CRPs; confirm and refine teacher and student surveys and classroom direct observation tools to measure these discrete indicators; and develop, refine, and evaluate a theory of change linking these indicators of CRPs with student academic and behavioral outcomes.

• Effects of Implicit Bias on Children's Early Outcomes—The purpose of the Fairness for All in Childhood Education (FACE) project is to examine the relationship between implicit bias, teacher expectations, teacher–child interactions, and child outcomes.

• The Early Learning Network (Supporting Early Learning From Preschool Through Early Elementary School Grades Network)—The purpose of this research network is to examine why many children—especially children from low-income households or other disadvantaged backgrounds—experience academic and social difficulties as they begin elementary school. Network members are identifying factors (such as state and local policies, instructional practices, and parental support) that are associated with early learning and achievement from preschool through the early elementary school grades.
  • At the January 2020 IES PI Meeting, Early Learning Network researchers presented on the achievement gaps for early learners. Watch the video here. Presentations, newsletters, and other resources are available on the Early Learning Network website.

• Reducing Achievement Gaps at Scale Through a Brief Self-Affirmation Intervention—In this study, researchers will test the effectiveness at scale of a low-cost, self-affirmation mindset intervention on the achievement, behavior, and attitudes of 7th grade students, focusing primarily on Black and Hispanic students. These minority student groups are susceptible to the threat of conforming to or being judged by negative stereotypes about the general underperformance of their racial/ethnic group ("stereotype threat"). A prior evaluation of this intervention has been reviewed by the What Works Clearinghouse and met standards without reservations.

• Testing the Efficacy of Double Check: A Cultural Proficiency Professional Development Model in Middle Schools—In this study, researchers tested whether Double Check, a teacher professional development program designed to promote cultural proficiency and student engagement practices, can improve student academic and behavioral outcomes in middle school.

IES seeks to work with education stakeholders at every level (for example, students, parents, educators, researchers, funders, and policy makers) to improve education access, equity, and outcomes for all learners, especially those who have been impacted by systemic bias. Together, we can do more.

This fall, IES will be hosting a technical working group on increasing the participation of researchers and institutions that have been historically underutilized in federal education research activities. If you have suggestions for how IES can better support research to improve equity in education, please contact us: NCER.Commissioner@ed.gov.  

Written by Christina Chhin (Christina.Chhin@ed.gov), National Center for Education Research (NCER).  

This is the fourth in a series of blog posts that stems from the 2020 Annual Principal Investigators Meeting. The theme of the meeting was Closing the Gaps for All Learners and focused on IES’s objective to support research that improves equity in access to education and education outcomes. Other posts in this series include Why I Want to Become an Education Researcher, Diversify Education Sciences? Yes, We Can!, and Closing the Opportunity Gap Through Instructional Alternatives to Exclusionary Discipline.

As the month of May draws to a close in this unprecedented time of COVID-19, recognizing May as National Mental Health Awareness Month has taken on new significance. Organizations such as the National Association of School Psychologists (NASP) have long advocated for school-based mental health services to address the lack of access to mental health treatment in the United States for children and youth. In a 2016 blog, we provided a snapshot of the PreK to 12 school-based mental health research that the National Center for Education Research (NCER) had supported up to that point. With schools closed and uncertainty about when they will open, we are keeping an eye on these and more recent projects to see how IES-funded researchers and their school partners have addressed or are addressing mental health needs.

Preschool

• Jason Downer (University of Virginia) developed the Learning to Objectively Observe Kids (LOOK) protocol to help prekindergarten teachers identify and understand children’s engagement in preschool and choose appropriate techniques to support children’s self-regulation skills.

Elementary School

• Golda Ginsburg (University of Connecticut) and Kelly Drake (Johns Hopkins University) developed the CALM (Child Anxiety Learning Modules) protocol for elementary school nurses to work with children who have excessive anxiety.
• Desiree Murray (University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill) is testing the Incredible Years Dina Dinosaur Treatment Program (IY-child) for helping early elementary school students with social-emotional and behavioral difficulties. This study is nearly complete, and findings will be available soon.
• Gregory Fabiano (SUNY-Buffalo) adapted the Coaching Our Acting Out Children: Heightening Essential Skills (COACHES) program for implementation in schools. This is a clinic-based program to help fathers of children with or at risk for attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) get more involved and engaged in their child's school performance. 
• Aaron Thompson (University of Missouri) is testing the Self-Monitoring Training and Regulation Strategy (STARS) intervention to see if it can improve behavior, social emotional learning skills, and academic performance for fifth grade students who engage in disruptive or otherwise challenging classroom behaviors. The pilot study of promise is currently in progress.
• Karen Bierman (Pennsylvania State University) is testing whether an intensive, individualized social skills training program, the Friendship Connections Program (FCP), can remediate the serious and chronic peer difficulties that 10–15 percent of elementary school students experience. Most of these students have or are at risk for emotional or behavioral disorders and exhibit social skill deficits (for example, poor communication skills, inability to resolve conflict) that alienate peers. This study is almost complete, and findings should be available soon.
• Linda Pfiffner (UC San Francisco) is completing development of a web-based professional development program for school mental health providers to gain the skills needed to implement evidence-based practices (EBPs) for student attention and behavior problems.

Middle School

• Joshua Langberg (Virginia Commonwealth University) refined the HOPS (Homework, Organization, and Planning Skills) program for middle school counselors and psychologists to support students with ADHD who need help with organization and time management. Dr. Langberg recently completed an efficacy trial of HOPS. In 2019, an independent research team at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia received a grant to test the effectiveness of HOPS.
• William Pelham (Florida International University) and colleagues at SUNY Buffalo are testing the efficacy of adaptive, evidence-based classroom interventions (such as Tier 1 and Tier 2 interventions delivered through a Response to Intervention framework) for children with ADHD in a Sequential Multiple Assignment Randomized Trial (SMART) design framework.
• Thomas Power (Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia) is testing the efficacy of a school-based organizational skills training program (OST-S) for students in 3rd through 5th grade with deficits in organization, time management, and planning (OTMP), key executive function skills that support success in school.
• Desiree Murray (UNC Chapel Hill) is completing the development of a self-regulation intervention for middle school students. The intervention will adapt and integrate strategies from existing evidence-based practices that intentionally target self-regulatory processes that develop during early adolescence.
• Catherine Bradshaw (University of Virginia) is adapting the Early Adolescent Coping Power (EACP) to the rural school context. The Rural-EACP will address the cultural and contextual challenges of providing appropriate supports to help youth with aggressive behavior challenges in rural settings.   

High School

• Tamar Mendelsohn (Johns Hopkins University) is leading an evaluation of RAP Club, a prevention program intended to improve coping skills and academic outcomes in low-income urban middle school students. 
• Margaret Sibley (Florida International University) developed the STRIPES (Students Taking Responsibility and Initiative through Peer-Enhanced Support) intervention to promote engagement with schools to improve behavioral and academic outcomes for high school students with ADHD. 
• In 2016, Eric Bruns (University of Washington) and his colleagues received an efficacy grant to test the impact of the Brief Intervention for School Clinicians (BRISC), a school-based mental health intervention, on student outcomes. The BRISC allows school-based clinicians to quickly assess high school students’ needs, develop treatment strategies, and monitor progress.
• Jesse Suter (University of Vermont) is testing RENEW (Rehabilitation, Empowerment, Natural supports, Education and Work), an individualized intervention for high school students with emotional and behavioral challenges (EBC). This study is nearly complete, and findings will be available shortly.
• Shannon Suldo and Elizabeth Shaunessy-Dedrick (University of South Florida) are developing a prevention program to help high school students in Advanced Placement (AP) and International Baccalaureate (IB) classes manage the stress inherent in this type of accelerated coursework. This project applies findings from a recently completed IES Exploration study, Intrapersonal Factors Associated with Academic Success among High School Students in Advanced Placement and International Baccalaureate (AP-IB) Programs. They are completing the pilot study of promise.
• Jami Young (Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia) is testing whether the Interpersonal Psychotherapy-Adolescent Skills Training (IPT-AST) Tier 2 depression prevention program is effective when implemented by school counselors.

Policy

• Sandra Chafouleas (University of Connecticut) identified current policies and national practice related to school-based behavioral assessment to determine whether current practice follows recommended best practice, and to develop policy recommendations for behavioral screening in schools. 

Written by Emily Doolittle (Emilly.Doolittle@ed.gov), Team Lead for Social and Behavioral Research at IES, National Center for Education Research

As I write this blog post, my 4-year-old is spraying me with a water sprayer while I am desperately protecting my computer from a direct hit. Earlier, while I was listening in on a meeting, she yelled out “hi!” anytime I took myself off mute. Balancing work and raising kids in this bizarre situation we find ourselves in is an overwhelming experience. When schools started closing, some parents resorted to posting suggested schedules for kids to keep up a routine and deliver academic content during the day. These were wonderful suggestions. As someone whose dissertation focused on how people learn, I should be applauding such posts, but instead, they filled me with a sense of anxiety and guilt. How am I supposed to balance getting my work done while also designing a rigorous curriculum of reading, writing, and math instruction for a kid whose attention span lasts about 10-20 minutes and who needs guidance and adult interaction to learn effectively? Let’s take a step back and recognize that this situation is not normal. We adults are filled with anxiety for the future. We are trying to manage an ever-growing list of things—do we have enough food? Do we need to restock medications? What deadlines do we need to hit at work?

So here is my message to you, parents, who are managing so much and trying desperately to keep your kids happy, healthy, and engaged: recognize that learning experiences exist in even the simplest of interactions between you and your kids. For example—

• When doing laundry, have your child help! Have them sort the laundry into categories, find the matching socks, name colors. Create patterns with colors or clothing types (for example, red sock, then blue, then red, which comes next?).
• Find patterns in your environment, in language (for example, nursery rhymes), and when playing with blocks or Legos. Researchers have shown that patterning is strongly related to early math skills.
• Talk about numbers when baking. I did this with my daughter yesterday morning. We made muffins and had a blast talking about measuring cups, the number of eggs in the recipe, and even turning the dial on the oven to the correct numbers. Older kids might be interested in learning the science behind baking.
• Take a walk down your street (practicing good social distancing of course!) and look for different things in your environment to count or talk about.
• Bring out the scissors and paper and learn to make origami along with your kids, both for its benefits for spatial thinking and as a fun, relaxing activity! In this project, researchers developed and pilot tested Think 3d!, an origami and pop-up paper engineering curriculum designed to teach spatial skills to students. The program showed promise in improving spatial thinking skills.
• If you choose to use screen time, choose apps that promote active, engaged, meaningful, socially interactive learning.
• If you choose to use television programs, there is evidence showing that high quality educational programs can improve students’ vocabulary knowledge.

Hopefully these examples show that you can turn even the most mundane tasks into fun learning experiences and interactions with your kids. They may not become experts in calculus at the end of all of this, but maybe they will look back fondly on this period of their life as a time when they were able to spend more time with their parents. At the end of the day, having positive experiences with our kids is going to be valuable for us and for them. If you have time to infuse some formal learning into this time, great, but if that feels like an overwhelmingly hard thing to do, be kind to yourself and recognize the value of even the most simple, positive interaction with your kids.

Written by Erin Higgins, PhD, who oversees the National Center for Education Research (NCER)'s Cognition and Student Learning portfolio.