Inside IES Research

Notes from NCER & NCSER

Recognizing Our Outstanding Predoctoral Fellows

September 6, 2016 Blog Editor NCER, NCSER, Research Training Share on TwitterShare on FacebookShare on Google+

Each year, the Institute of Education Sciences (IES) recognizes an outstanding fellow from its Predoctoral Interdisciplinary Research Training Programs in the Education Sciences for academic accomplishments and contributions to education research. For the first time, IES has selected joint recipients for the 2015 award: Meghan McCormick and Eric Taylor. They will receive their awards and present their research at the annual IES Principal Investigators meeting in Washington, D.C. in December 2016.

Meghan completed her Ph.D. in Applied Psychology at New York University and wrote her dissertation on the efficacy of INSIGHTS, a social emotional learning intervention aimed at improving low-income urban students’ academic achievement. She is currently a research associate at MDRC. Eric completed his PhD in the Economics of Education from Stanford University and wrote his dissertation on the contributions of the quality and quantity of classroom instruction to student learning. Eric is currently an assistant professor at the Harvard University Graduate School of Education.

We asked Meghan and Eric how participating in an IES predoctoral training program helped their development as researchers.  For more information about the IES predoctoral training program, visit our website.

Meghan McCormick

Having the opportunity to be part of the IES Predoctoral Training Program helped me to develop a set of theoretical, quantitative, and practical skills that I would not have had the opportunity to develop otherwise. 

I was drawn to attend NYU (New York University) for my doctoral studies specifically because the school of education at NYU offered the (IES) predoctoral training program, in addition to hosting a core set of faculty with research interests very much aligned with my own. In my first year of graduate school, I quickly became aware that being a part of the IES program allowed me the freedom to study with an interdisciplinary set of scholars who could support multiple components of my training through a diverse set of experiences.

For example, in my work with Elise Cappella, Erin O’Connor, and Sandee McClowry, I was able to learn about the logistics of implementing a cluster-randomized trial across a broad set of schools, and conducting impact analyses to evaluate the efficacy of one social-emotional learning program called INSIGHTS. My experience working with Jim Kemple and Lori Nathanson at the Research Alliance for New York City schools showed me how to use research in a way that was responsive to the needs and goals of education policy makers. Quantitative coursework with Jennifer Hill and Sharon Weinberg helped me to apply rigorous quantitative methods to the data that were collected in schools, and to think concretely about the implications of research design for my future work. Coursework with developmental psychologists conducting policy-relevant research, such as Pamela Morris and Larry Aber, helped me to apply comprehensive theoretical framing when examining research questions of interest, and interpreting results. In addition, I have always been primarily interested in conducting interdisciplinary research that is responsive to policy and practice. My dissertation research grew out of my interest in learning about interdisciplinary methods for causal inference and applying them to research questions I had about how, for whom, and under what circumstances the social-emotional learning program I helped to evaluate effected outcomes for low-income students.

Most importantly, perhaps, having been part of the IES program’s collaborative and interdisciplinary community helped me to identify the type of research I wanted to do after finishing graduate school. Primarily, I knew that I wanted to conduct policy-relevant research, using the most rigorous quantitative methods available, with a team of researchers coming from different backgrounds. This realization led me to work at MDRC, where I have been working with JoAnn Hsueh and other colleagues to apply my skills from the predoctoral training program in new research design work that is responsive to critical policy questions in early education policy and practice right now. I feel prepared for this new work given the opportunities that the IES program afforded me across the last five years. 

Eric Taylor

I would emphasize two benefits. First, the IES program at Stanford helped me create and strengthen professional relationships with other education researchers and practitioners. Those relationships provided important opportunities to learn skills in ways that could not happen in the classroom but also complemented the excellent classroom instruction. The new relationships were diverse: other graduate students in different disciplines, Stanford faculty and faculty at other institutions, and, critically, practitioners and policy makers. For example, supported by my fellowship, I joined faculty at (the University of) Michigan and Columbia (University) working with the DC Public Schools to improve teacher applicant screening and hiring.

Second, those relationships combined with the financial support of the fellowship made it possible to work on new and timely research projects. During my time as an IES predoc, with collaborators at Brown, we started a researcher-practitioner partnership with colleges at the Tennessee Department of Education. The resulting work has taught me much about the day-to-day realities of school policy making and management, and how research can and cannot help. The partnership with Tennessee also grew into a five-year grant from IES, which began last year, to study state policy and teacher development through evaluation.

In short, I am certain my career is much further along today than it would have been without the IES predoc fellowship.

By Katina Stapleton, Education Research Analyst, National Center for Education Research 

 

The Institute of Education Sciences at AERA

April 8, 2016 Blog Editor Funding Opportunities, General, NCER, NCSER Share on TwitterShare on FacebookShare on Google+

The American Educational Research Association (AERA) will hold its annual meeting April 8 through April 12 in Washington, D.C.—the largest educational research gathering in the nation. This will be a special meeting for AERA, as it is celebrating 100 years of advocating for the development and use of research in education. The program includes hundreds of sessions, including opportunities to learn about cutting edge education research and opportunities to broaden and deepen the field. 

About 30 sessions will feature staff from the Institute of Education Sciences (IES) discussing IES-funded research, evaluation, and statistics, as well as training and funding opportunities.

On Saturday, April 9, at 10:35 a.m., attendees will have a chance to meet the Institute’s leadership and hear about the areas of work that IES will be focusing on in the coming year. Speakers include Ruth Curran Neild, IES’ delegated director, and the leaders of the four centers in IES: Thomas Brock, commissioner of the National Center for Education Research (NCER); Peggy Carr, acting commissioner of the National Center for Educational Statistics (NCES); Joy Lesnick, acting commissioner of the National Center for Education Evaluation and Regional Assistance (NCEE), and Joan McLaughlin, commissioner of the National Center for Special Education Research (NCSER).

On Monday, April 11, at 9:45 a.m., attendees can speak to one of several IES staffers who will be available at the Research Funding Opportunities—Meet Your Program Officers session. Program officers from NCER, NCSER, and NCEE will be on hand to answer questions about programs and grant funding opportunities. Several IES representatives will also be on hand Monday afternoon, at 4:15 p.m. for the Federally Funded Data Resources: Opportunities for Research session to discuss the myriad datasets and resources that are available to researchers.

NCES staff will lead sessions and present on a variety of topics, from The Role of School Finance in the Pursuit of Equity (Saturday, 12:25 p.m.) to Understanding Federal Education Policies and Data about English Learners (Sunday, April 10, 8:15 a.m.) and what we can learn from the results of PIAAC, a survey of adult skills (also Sunday, 8:15 a.m.). Dr. Carr will be a part of several sessions, including one on Sunday morning (10:35 a.m.) about future directions for NCES longitudinal studies and another on Monday morning (10 a.m.) entitled Issues and Challenges in the Fair and Valid Assessment of Diverse Populations in the 21st Century. 

On Monday, at 11:45 a.m., you can also learn about an IES-supported tool, called RCT-YES, that is designed to reduce barriers to rigorous impact studies by simplifying estimation and reporting of study results (Dr. Lesnick will be among those presenting). And a team from the IES research centers (NCER/NCSER) will present Sunday morning (10:35 a.m.) on communication strategies for disseminating education research (which includes this blog!).

IES staff will also participate in a number of other roundtables and poster sessions. For instance, on Tuesday, April 12, at 8:15 a.m., grab a cup of coffee and attend the structured poster session with the Institute’s 10 Regional Educational Laboratories (RELs). This session will focus on building partnerships to improve data use in education.  REL work will also be featured at several other AERA sessions.  

Did you know that the National Library of Education (NLE) is a component of IES? On Friday and Monday afternoon, attendees will have a unique opportunity to go on a site visit to the library. You’ll learn about the library’s current and historical resources – including its collection of more than 20,000 textbooks dating from the mid-19th century. The Library offers information, statistical, and referral services to the Department of Education and other government agencies and institutions, and to the public.

If you are going to AERA, follow us on Twitter to learn more about our sessions and our work.  And if you are tweeting during one of our sessions, please include @IESResearch in your tweet. 

By Dana Tofig, Communications Director, IES

The PI Meeting in 140 Characters

December 21, 2015 Blog Editor General, NCER, NCSER Share on TwitterShare on FacebookShare on Google+

By Wendy Wei, Program Assistant, National Center for Education Research

How can practitioners and policymakers apply education research to their everyday work if they never hear about it or do not understand it? Communicating and disseminating research findings plays an integral role in promoting the education sciences and advancing the field.

That is why we made communication and dissemination a major theme at the IES Principal Investigators’ Meeting held earlier this month (December 10-11). The two-day meeting in Washington, D.C., featured five sessions that focused on communications – ranging from data visualization techniques to effective dissemination strategies to hearing journalists’ perspectives on how to share scientific results with the general public.

There was a lot of talk about social media during the meeting and plenty of tweeting about the presentations. We used the Twitter hashtag, #IESPIMtg, to foster an ongoing conversation for meeting attendees and to share findings that emerged from sessions.  Any tweet that included #IESPIMtg was automatically pooled together, generating a live Twitter feed that was on display in the lobby throughout the meeting.

 You can see all of the #IESPImtg tweets online, but here are some highlights:

"There is a tremendous sense of urgency to bridge the gap between research and practice..." --John B King #IESPIMtg

— Leah Wisdom (@lifelnglearner) December 10, 2015

.@StanfordEd's Sean Reardon: Good partnership work can lead to new knowledge, change policy+practice, improve data quality #IESPIMtg

— Bill Penuel (@bpenuel) December 11, 2015

#IESPIMtg Practitioner partners play a critical role in making sense of data and analyses in RPPs.

— Jennifer Russell (@Jenn_L_Russell) December 10, 2015

And we can get a little bit meta now…communicating about how to communicate:

Hirsh-Pasek & Golinkoff urges researchers to create "'edible science' that is accessible, digestible and usable." #IESPIMtg

— Tomoko Wakabayashi (@twakabayashi264) December 10, 2015

Awesome presentation on #DataVisualization by @jschwabish: Show the data, reduce the clutter, stop distracting attention. #IESPIMtg

— Rudy Ruiz (@RudyRuiz_BMore) December 10, 2015

.@KavithaCardoza Explaining your research--Don't think of it as "dumbing down." Think of it as simplifying. #IESPIMtg

— Dana Tofig (@dtofig) December 11, 2015

And, of course, what's Twitter without a little fun? When we tweeted this picture...

The poster session is going strong. Principal investigators present findings from #iesfunded research. #IESPIMtg

— IES Research (@IESResearch) December 10, 2015

...Chris Magnuson, Director of Innovation for Live It, Learn It, posted this reply: 

@IESResearch careful...photo looks like it was taken on Death Star! May the force be with all grantees! #SBIR #IES

— Chris Magnuson (@cromagnuson) December 10, 2015

The National Center for Education Research (NCER) and the National Center for Special Education Research (NCSER) have made a commitment to be active contributors in communicating with and engaging the general public in the exciting findings of NCER- and NCSER-funded work. Over the past few years, we have been active on Twitter (you can follow us @IESResearch), and this past year, we launched our blog (the very one you are reading!). These two platforms have provided us with an outlet to share research findings, provide updates about events and deadlines, and connect with audiences we otherwise might not reach.

For those of you who could not make the PI meeting, videos will be posted on the conference website in about a month. So stay tuned!

We hope you’ll continue the conversation started at the PI meeting by following us on Twitter at @IESResearch or sharing your thoughts with us at IESResearch@ed.gov.

 

The Nexus Between Teaching and Research: What I Learned Working on an IES Grant

November 30, 2015 Blog Editor General, NCSER Share on TwitterShare on FacebookShare on Google+

 

Samuel Choo is a doctoral student at the dissertation stage in the Department of Early Childhood, Special Education, and Rehabilitation Counseling at the University of Kentucky (UK). In this blog post, he describes how working on an IES grant gave him first-hand experiences in planning and carrying out research in schools. He also discusses how these research experiences helped him understand the important connections between research and teaching.

How did you get started working on this IES research project?

The first I heard of IES was six years ago as a resource room teacher at a middle school. Dr. Brian Bottge, who is now my doctoral adviser, was awarded a NCSER grant to test the effects of Enhanced Anchored Instruction (EAI) on the math performance of middle school students. My school was randomly assigned to the EAI group. The project staff did a good job of teaching us how to implement EAI in our resource rooms. Soon after teaching with the new curriculum, I noticed that my students were much more motivated and engaged than they had been. In fact, they looked like they were actually enjoying math! Posttest scores showed positive results in favor of the new curriculum.

And so this experience as a teacher got you more interested in research?

Yes! The next year I applied to the UK doctoral program. I joined Dr. Bottge’s IES grant team as a research assistant where I learned how classroom-based research is planned and conducted. I had many opportunities to participate in the research experience. In my case, I helped train math and special education teachers, observed classrooms and assessed research fidelity, provided teachers with technical support, assisted in scoring tests, and worked on data entry and analysis. Project leaders also asked me to suggest revisions to the daily lesson plans based on my experiences teaching with EAI the year before.

Can you talk more about your developing research interests related to math education?

After the grant ended and after I finished my doctoral coursework, I went back to teaching in North Carolina, where I taught low performing middle school students in a Title I resource room. I ran my own pilot studies using what I had learned while teaching with EAI as both a research participant and research assistant. To help offset the cost of materials for my first study, I was awarded a $1500 Bright Ideas Grant from the North Carolina’s Electric Cooperatives. Thanks to the company’s generosity, I was able to fully implement all the lesson plans developed by Dr. Bottge’s grant team.

This experience was especially important to me because it was my first try at conducting my own research with a prescribed protocol, which I had learned from working on the IES project. Posttests showed statistically significant improvement of students in the EAI group in both computation and problem solving. Based on these results, the sponsor invited me to participate in a panel discussion in Raleigh, NC. The CEOs of the company attended the event along with policy makers and school administrators from across the state. This whole process, from applying for funding to carrying out the study to reporting the results, helped me make connections between university, classroom, and community.

What have been your big takeaways from these experiences?

From the training I received as a study participant, I have become a better teacher.  From working on an IES-funded grant team, I learned a lot about how to conduct classroom-based studies. I am looking forward to designing new instructional methods and testing their effectiveness. Similar to how my students learned math in a hands-on way, I learned research methods by having the opportunity to use them in practice, and for that I am very grateful. 

How to Develop Your Career in Education Research: IES Training Opportunities

November 20, 2015 Blog Editor Funding Opportunities, Research Training Share on TwitterShare on FacebookShare on Google+

By Corinne Alfeld, NCER Program Officer

In honor of career development month, we would like to remind you about training opportunities funded by IES. We have invested in training programs since 2004 with the aim of increasing the supply of scientists and researchers in education who are prepared to conduct rigorous education research that advances knowledge within the field and addresses issues important to education policymakers and practitioners. These efforts are intended to lead both to the training of talented education researchers from a variety of backgrounds and to the incorporation of diverse ideas and perspectives in education research.

In this blog we describe five types of training opportunities currently offered through the National Center for Education Research (NCER) and the National Center for Special Education Research (NCSER) that span from undergraduate to the postdoctoral level and beyond.

Training Opportunities for Current or Future Doctoral Students
Are you a current or aspiring doctoral student wondering what training opportunities are available to you? You may be interested in applying to one of 10 training programs funded by NCER’s Predoctoral Interdisciplinary Research Training Program in the Education Sciences that train predoctoral fellows in interdisciplinary programs involving a number of academic disciplines (e.g., economics, education, psychology, public policy, sociology, and statistics, among others). These fellowships can be from 2 to 5 years in length depending on the training program model and typically include tuition and benefits, a $30,000 stipend, and a small research/travel fund. Fellows who complete their training program have the skills necessary to produce research that is rigorous in method as well as relevant and accessible to education stakeholders such as practitioners and policymakers.

If you are interested in becoming a predoctoral fellow, you must apply directly to one of the training programs, not to IES.  Each of the 10 fellowship programs funded in 2014-15 has its own application process and acceptance criteria. For more information on becoming a predoctoral fellow, check out this resource on Applying for a Predoctoral Interdisciplinary Research Training Program Fellowship.

 

Postdoctoral Training Opportunities
Are you finishing up your doctorate and wondering how you can get more experience in education research? Or perhaps you’re looking to return to academia through a postdoctoral position? If so, you may want to apply to one of the our programs funded under the Postdoctoral Research Training Program in the Education Sciences Program (NCER) or the Postdoctoral Research Training Program in Special Education Program (NCSER). Through these two grant programs, IES funds training programs at doctoral-granting institutions to further prepare researchers who have obtained their Ph.D.s or Ed.D.s to become scholars capable of conducting high-quality, independent education or special education research. These postdoctoral training programs provide practical, hands-on experiences; enrichment of theoretical and empirical knowledge; and opportunities for fellows to build professional skills and networks that will support working with other researchers and relevant education research stakeholders.

To inquire about postdoctoral fellowship openings, follow the hyperlinks in this section to search for currently (awarded in 2010-15) funded programs at various universities around the country. For example, here are the 2015 NCER-funded programs and 2012 NCSER-funded programs.

 

Other Upcoming Training Opportunities:

  • Undergraduate, Post-baccalaureate, and Master’s Students. If you are an upper-level undergraduate student, recent graduate, and/or master’s student, especially from a group that is underrepresented in doctoral study (including racial and ethnic minorities, first-generation college students, economically disadvantaged students, veterans, and students with disabilities), you may be interested in the Pathways to the Education Sciences Research Training Program (Pathways). Established in 2015, the Pathways program funds training programs at minority-serving institutions (MSIs) and institutions of higher education that partner with MSIs. These training programs will provide fellows with education research experience and professional development to prepare them to pursue doctoral study in the education sciences or in fields relevant to education research.

Up to five Pathways training programs will be awarded to MSIs (and their partners) in 2016. These new programs will begin recruiting fellows in 2016 and 2017, so keep your eyes and ears open for more information about where and how to apply!

 

  • Early Career Education Researchers. Are you an early career researcher at your first appointment? If so, you may qualify for and be interested in one of our programs that target early career researchers in statistical and research methodology (NCER) and special education (NCSER).

Look for upcoming training opportunities for early career researchers in future Request for Applications for training grants (CFDA 84.305B and 84.324B) and statistical and research methodology grants (CFDA 84.305D).

 

  • Active Researchers Looking to Improve Their Methodological Expertise. Are you a current researcher (e.g., at a university or research firm) who would like to add tools to your methodological toolkit or further refine your skills with such tools? If so, then the Methods Training for Education Researchers Program may be for you.

If you are interested in methodological training, sign up for the IES Newsflash for announcements of upcoming workshops or periodically check our list of IES-funded workshops.

 

If you have questions about our training programs, please contact Corinne.Alfeld@ed.gov.