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Suggested Citation:"2 Background." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2022. The Future of Education Research at IES: Advancing an Equity-Oriented Science. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/26428.
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2

Background

As introduced in Chapter 1, this committee was tasked with providing guidance to the Institute of Education Sciences (IES) on how it might expand and improve its work consistent with the mandates laid out in its authorizing legislation, the Education Sciences Reform Act (ESRA). To accomplish this objective, the committee’s first step was to consider background information about the context in which the National Center for Education Research (NCER) and National Center for Special Education Research (NCSER) operate. In this chapter, the committee expands on the background information provided in Chapter 1 to describe the initial problems that ESRA was trying to solve, identify how NCER and NCSER have sought to address those problems, consider what NCER and NCSER have achieved in their current structure, and examine how the field has changed in the intervening decades since ESRA was enacted.1 Taken in concert, this background allowed the committee to lay the groundwork for recommendations for how NCER and NCSER might adapt to meet the contemporary and future needs of education research.

EDUCATION RESEARCH IN 2002

When ESRA was authorized at the turn of the 21st century, education research was in the spotlight. In 2001, Congress reauthorized the Elementary and Secondary Education Act as the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB)

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1 We discuss how NCER and NCSER are organized, including approaches to funding and other structural considerations, in Chapter 3.

Suggested Citation:"2 Background." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2022. The Future of Education Research at IES: Advancing an Equity-Oriented Science. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/26428.
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of 2001, establishing a series of policy priorities and mandating that decisions about schooling flow from “research that involves the application of rigorous, systematic, and objective procedures to obtain reliable and valid knowledge relevant to education activities and programs.” The following year, the National Research Council (now the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine) released Scientific Research in Education, which noted that the passage of NCLB had “brought a new sense of urgency to understanding the ways in which the basic tenets of science manifest in the study of teaching, learning, and schooling” so that decisions could be informed by that science (NRC, 2002). When Congress authorized the founding of a new federal science agency devoted solely to education research in November 2002, the timing was fortuitous.

Grover “Russ” Whitehurst was selected as the first director of IES. Whitehurst expressed concerns about the state of education research in the United States prior to 2002. Speaking to the American Educational Research Association (AERA) in 2003, he noted that he was unconvinced that education research prior to 2002 would be able to change practice toward improving student outcomes. Whitehurst remarked, “Education hasn’t even incorporated into instruction what we know from basic research [in cognitive neuroscience into] practice—and I learned about that in a psychology course I took in 1962” (Whitehurst, 2003). Whitehurst posited that a new IES would focus on applied research: that is, research “that has high consideration of use, that is practical, that is applied, that is relevant to practitioners and policy makers.”

In his 2003 comments to AERA, Whitehurst laid out a set of principles to guide IES in pursuing scientific research in education. He asserted that “questions of efficacy and effectiveness, or what works, are causal, and are addressed most rigorously with randomized field trials.” These principles, gleaned from scientific research in other fields, served as the conceptual underpinnings of how IES was initially organized and operated. They included the following:

  1. Randomized trials are the only sure method for determining the effectiveness of education programs and practices.
  2. Randomized trials are not appropriate for all questions.
  3. Interpretations of the results of randomized trials can be enhanced with results from other methods.
  4. A complete portfolio of federal funding in education will include programs of research that employ a variety of research methods.
  5. Questions of what works are paramount for practitioners; hence randomized trials are of high priority at the Institute (Whitehurst, 2003).
Suggested Citation:"2 Background." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2022. The Future of Education Research at IES: Advancing an Equity-Oriented Science. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/26428.
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So, while methods outside of the randomized controlled trial would be part of IES’s portfolio, studies that employed randomized designs would be privileged in IES’s funding competitions. In organizing the institute this way, Whitehurst hoped that IES would create a body of knowledge upon which practitioners could draw to make immediate decisions informed by high-quality research. He concluded his presentation to AERA by presenting a vision for the future:

The people on the front lines of education want research to help them make better decisions in those areas in which they have choices to make, such as curriculum, teacher professional development, assessment, technology, and management…. I have a vision of a day when any educator or policy maker will want to know what the research says before making an important decision. The research will be there. It will be rigorous. It will be relevant. It will be disseminated and accessed through tools that make it useable. The production and dissemination of this research will be in the hands of an education research community that is large, well-trained, and of high prestige (Whitehurst, 2003).

Responses from the education research community to Whitehurst’s vision reflected sharply divided perspectives. Many of the most prominent U.S. education researchers were eager to see leadership oriented toward this articulation of scientific rigor. Previewing Whitehurst’s plan for IES, Robert Slavin outlined the opportunities for evidence-based policy in education, describing in detail the critical importance as well as the difficulties of employing randomized designs in making claims about what works in education. Despite its challenges, he argued, it is important that education research seize the moment to demonstrate what kind of study is possible in education. Slavin (2002) noted,

This is a time when it makes sense to concentrate resources and energies on a set of randomized experiments of impeccable quality and clear policy importance to demonstrate that such studies can be done. Over the longer run, I believe that a mix of randomized and rigorous matched experiments evaluating educational interventions would be healthier than a steady diet of randomized experiments, but right now we need to establish the highest possible standard of evidence, on a par with standards in other fields, to demonstrate what educational research can accomplish.

In praising the move toward randomization, Slavin called for using this opening to build capacity and proof of concept. Eventually, he suggested, the field would be able to strategically engage multiple methods toward a robust, comprehensive knowledge base.

Suggested Citation:"2 Background." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2022. The Future of Education Research at IES: Advancing an Equity-Oriented Science. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/26428.
×

Others in the field were less enthusiastic about this approach. Critiques ranged from frustration around codifying “what counts” as knowledge in education to more tactical concerns about the practical capacity of schools and districts to serve as sites for experiments. In a rebuttal to Slavin’s claims, Olson (2004) described the limitations of experimental design for building a robust knowledge base. Olson argued,

Good research is not just a matter of trying out things or even comparing them, but rather a matter of advancing theoretically inspired notions of sufficient merit that they would benefit from being put to strenuous empirical test. We require richer theories than those assuming simple cause-effect relations among treatments (as defined by designers), their construals and implementations by teachers, and their interpretations by learners. The reputation of educational research is tarnished less by the lack of replicable results than by the lack of any deeper theory that would explain why the thousands of experiments that make up the literature of the field appear to have yielded so little.

Other criticisms emerged at that time, as well. Eisenhart and Towne (2003) argued that the definitions of scientifically based research were not coherent across different forms of policy guidance and would benefit from more public input. Others argued that ESRA, NCLB, and Scientific Research in Education fundamentally misunderstood the epistemology and practice of qualitative research (Howe, 2003a; Erickson & Gutiérrez, 2002). These critics argued that qualitative research can do more than just investigate “what is happening,” but also can generate theory and develop useful interpretations of classroom activity for both research and practice.

Nevertheless, ESRA gave Whitehurst the opportunity to forge ahead with an IES that reflected his interpretation of rigor in scientific research in education. The organizing structures and priorities of NCER and NCSER reflect his vision. In the section that follows, we discuss the substance of NCER and NCSER’s work, and describe how this work has altered the shape of education research in the United States.

FUNDING A VISION OF SCIENTIFIC RESEARCH IN EDUCATION

From their outset, both NCER and NCSER (authorized in an amended ESRA in 2004) were organized to support a science of education research that would contribute to “expanding fundamental knowledge and understanding of education from early childhood through postsecondary study” (ESRA, 2002). As established in ESRA, the founding research mission of NCER was to

Suggested Citation:"2 Background." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2022. The Future of Education Research at IES: Advancing an Equity-Oriented Science. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/26428.
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(1) Sponsor sustained research that will lead to the accumulation of knowledge and understanding of education, to—(A) ensure that all children have access to a high-quality education; (B) improve student academic achievement, including through the use of educational technology; (C) close the achievement gap between high-performing and low-performing students through the improvement of teaching and learning of reading, writing, mathematics, science, and other academic subjects; and (D) improve access to, and opportunity for, postsecondary education.

Correspondingly, NCSER’s founding mission included the following: “Sponsor research to expand knowledge and understanding of the needs of infants, toddlers, and children with disabilities in order to improve the developmental, educational, and transitional results of such individuals.”

With these missions in mind, NCER and NCSER have operationalized scientific research in education as research that both (a) focuses on student outcomes, and (b) prioritizes rigor by emphasizing research designs and methods appropriate to the research question posed. The aim of documenting programs and practices that work to improve student outcomes ultimately calls for impact studies, which bring a particular emphasis on randomized designs with sufficient statistical power to detect anticipated effects. A corresponding goal has been to improve the capacity of education researchers to carry out this new charge.

In the committee’s view, the establishment of NCER and NCSER was foundational for elevating scientific research in education. Over the past 20 years, NCER and NCSER have produced valuable knowledge across a broad range of topics, which collectively provide evidence of how to improve academic outcomes for students from infancy to adulthood. The centers’ work has rapidly expanded the research tools (including the methodologies, measures, and technologies) necessary to carry out scientific research. Finally, as discussed in depth in Chapter 7, NCER and NCSER’s investments in training education researchers have changed the shape of the field. Since their inception, NCER and NCSER’s training programs have provided opportunities for specific methodological training experiences and career development opportunities. These programs have been highly popular, and they have allowed for the development of a cadre of researchers who share similar understandings of how to conduct research on particular issues.

These strengths, taken together, have been pivotal to the work of building a coherent field in education research. In the absence of NCER and NCSER’s strategic funding and resources, education research in the United States would be a different enterprise than it is today.

Suggested Citation:"2 Background." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2022. The Future of Education Research at IES: Advancing an Equity-Oriented Science. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/26428.
×

CHANGES SINCE 2002

As noted above, IES—and NCER and NCSER—have substantially reshaped education research since 2002. In the intervening decades, though, the world has changed around IES—in part because of the knowledge base to which NCER and NCSER have contributed. In this section, we consider several changes that have occurred since the founding of IES, and consider what these changes might mean for NCER and NCSER’s current portfolio. The committee acknowledges that IES has already taken many steps to respond to changes in the field; for example, in Chapter 5 we discuss IES’s changing approach toward the topics it seeks to fund, including the increasingly prominent role of special topics and of large-scale research networks. The question facing IES, however, is whether NCER and NCSER’s current structure and priorities can sufficiently address these broader changes in the field or whether more substantial changes are necessary.

Use of Research Evidence in Education

As noted in Chapter 1, the committee found that the structure of IES (as dictated in ESRA) reflects a particular understanding of how research is used in education. Indeed, as stated earlier, IES categorizes dissemination of research findings as the purview of the What Works Clearinghouse in the National Center for Education Evaluation and Regional Assistance, while NCER and NCSER are tasked with funding the doing of research.2 However, contemporary research on evidence use indicates that this view of how stakeholders engage with research and evidence is inconsistent with the realities of evidence use in the education system. Indeed, in the past 20 years, the field has evolved toward much more nuanced understandings, not only of how stakeholders do (and do not) engage with evidence from research, but also of which conditions facilitate and sustain productive use. The inconsistency between assumptions prevalent in 2002 about how educators would come to use research evidence, and what subsequent studies show about how evidence is used in practice, has constrained IES’s ability to achieve its legislated function to “promote the use, development, and application of knowledge gained from scientifically valid research activities (Education Sciences Reform Act of 2002, Section 112(3)).

Research on the instrumental use of research evidence—that is, when evidence from research serves as a tool for making policy or pedagogical decisions—indicates that this form of evidence use is less common than researchers would like; specifically, research evidence plays a limited role in

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2 The committee notes that NCER and NCSER do both require that applicants propose a dissemination strategy as part of their request for funding, which we discuss in Chapters 4 and 8 of this report.

Suggested Citation:"2 Background." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2022. The Future of Education Research at IES: Advancing an Equity-Oriented Science. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/26428.
×

the decision making of central office staff, local school boards, principals, and teachers (Finnigan & Daly, 2017; Asen et al., 2013, 2011; Farley-Ripple, 2012).3 Instead, prior research suggests that educators turn to people first and prefer evidence curated by colleagues to inform their decisions (Finnigan & Daly, 2017; Penuel et al., 2017); central office staff prefer publications from professional organizations, conferences, the Internet, and leadership books over peer-reviewed journal articles (Farley-Ripple, 2012); and school board members rely on a variety of evidence (e.g., experience or testimony) in deliberations, rarely using research as evidence in these processes (Asen et al., 2013, 2011). Educators hold a variety of definitions of what counts as evidence as they consider education issues or problems, ranging from empirical studies, to local evaluation reports, to expert opinion, to the popular press (Finnigan, Daly, & Che, 2012). So, while actors throughout the education system acknowledge that evidence from research is important, the extent to which they actually use research (versus other types of evidence) in instrumental ways varies widely.

However, research on this subject over the last decade has shown that conceptual use of research, while not always commonplace, may be occurring in ways that make meaningful differences throughout the system of U.S. education. Stakeholders engage in conceptual use of research when they interact with research in ways that inform how they ask questions and understand problems. Conceptual use may occur slowly, intermittently, and over long periods of time, which makes it a substantially harder phenomenon to study, though no less important to understand.

As Tseng and Nutley (2014) described:

[Conceptual] use is contingent, interactive, and iterative. It involves people individually and collectively engaging with research over time, bringing their own and their organization’s goals, motivations, routines, and political contexts with them. Research also enters the policy process at various times—as problems are defined (and redefined); ideas are generated; solutions are identified; and policies are adopted, implemented, and sometimes stalled.

Importantly, recent research suggests that the use of research evidence in education by policy makers and practitioners can be facilitated by individuals who serve as “research brokers” as well as by intermediary organizations and networks. This finding is important because it helps clarify the ways that researchers connect with policy makers and practitioners indirectly rather than directly. For example, Finnegan and Daly (2014) found that key individuals in school districts served as brokers. Unfor-

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3 This section draws on findings synthesized for the committee by Finnigan (2021).

Suggested Citation:"2 Background." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2022. The Future of Education Research at IES: Advancing an Equity-Oriented Science. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/26428.
×

tunately, high levels of churn in these leadership roles meant that the ties relating to research and evidence were constantly being disrupted. Other work has found that staff at county-level school districts played important brokering roles (Neal et al., 2015) and that district staff have filled gaps between producers and users of evidence (Finnigan & Daly, 2014). In these cases, the brokers serve in intermediary positions, but they are internal to the organization, rather than external entities. In all cases, brokers can play a critical role in the flow of ideas and practices because they filter what is known in a given organization about research and evidence.

In the past decade, new groups have emerged to position themselves as the “interpreters” of evidence (Debray et al., 2014; Scott & Jabbar, 2014; Scott et al., 2014). In essence, brokers operate within a type of market, as policy makers and practitioners require information to make decisions and intermediaries respond to this demand (Debray et al., 2014). Intermediaries have taken on important roles in the packaging of research and the management of perceptions to “sell” policy makers or practitioners on sets of findings, as well as to validate whether evidence is credible. Of course, while filling a larger “need” of the system to bridge researcher to user, another “need” was being filled as many of these organizations spent considerable resources moving their own agendas forward, many unchecked (Reckhow, Tompkins-Strange, & Galey-Horn, 2021; Scott & Jabbar, 2014). Intermediary organizations are active in promoting, participating in, or opposing educational policies like charter schools, vouchers, “parent trigger” laws, and merit-pay systems for teachers (Scott et al., 2015).

Use of research evidence occurs in a robust network of interconnected relationships, whether one focuses on the school, district, state, or federal government. Several studies that involved case studies and network analysis found that trust plays a role in use of research and evidence (Penuel et al., 2020; Asen, 2015; Finnigan & Daly, 2014) in that stakeholders make determinations about the evidence based upon the person providing the evidence. In other words, the same type of evidence brought by a trustworthy or untrustworthy source will have a different result in a person’s response to that evidence, for example, whether it resonates or whether they are skeptical of it. As such, it is important for the research community to be mindful not only that individuals have social relationships, but also that the quality of relationships between individuals is consequential for use of research and evidence.

Understanding how research evidence is used by stakeholders making decisions in education is a central component of ensuring that IES’s investments in research ultimately matter for improving education in the United States. For this reason, and in light of how much the field has grown in the past two decades, the committee brings these perspectives to bear in its recommendations for IES throughout this report.

Suggested Citation:"2 Background." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2022. The Future of Education Research at IES: Advancing an Equity-Oriented Science. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/26428.
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Attending to Culture and Deficit Ideologies in Understandings of Learning

Over the past 20 years, the study of human learning has expanded, shifted, and progressed in critically important ways, leading to foundational changes in conceptions of human learning.4 Among the most important of these advances is the wide recognition of what Arnett (2008) and later Henrich and colleagues (2010) named the “WEIRD (western, educated, industrialized, rich, democratic) people problem” or the deep systemic bias in the social and behavioral sciences, of which educational sciences is an important part. A watershed special publication in Brain and Behavioral Sciences, and another in Nature, reviewed the accumulation of evidence demonstrating that overly broad claims to understanding human learning and development were dubious at best. The authors in these collections, and many others, called attention to broad-scale sample bias as well as experimental design bias (e.g., Thalmayer, Toscanelli, & Arnett, 2021; Hruschka et al., 2018; Baumard & Sperber, 2010) that reflect field-level flattening of human diversity and cultural variation. To concretize this problem, 96 percent of studies in psychology are conducted with WEIRD samples, which reflects just 12 percent of the world’s population, and even in societies that are multiracial like the United States, more than 83 percent of those studies are conducted with predominantly White samples (Henrich et al., 2010). This critique has allowed social scientists to unpack traditions of literature as they apply to complex, plural societies.

The growing body of scholarship demonstrating important cultural variation ranges from foundational processes such as visual and olfactory perception (e.g., Kay, 2005; Gordon, 2004; Levinson, 2003; Roberson, Davies, & Davidoff, 2000; D’Andrade, 1995) and basic cognitive and moral reasoning processes (e.g., Haidt & Graham, 2007; Norenzayan, Choi, & Peng, 2007; Nisbett, 2003; Thirumurthy, 2003; Al-Shehab, 2002; Baek, 2002; Peng & Nisbett, 1999); to core models of self (e.g., Heine, 2008; Fryberg & Markus, 2003; Oyserman, Coon, & Kemmelmeier, 2002; Markus & Kitayama, 1991) and related motivational and decisional processes (e.g., Tanner, Arnett, & Leis, 2009); to dimensions of sociality such as personal choice (e.g., ojalehto, Medin, & García, 2017; Schwartz, 2004; Kahneman & Tversky, 2000; Bandura, 1982), individualism (e.g., Morling & Lamoreaux, 2008; Vohs et al., 2008; Fryberg & Markus, 2003; Nisbett, 2003; Oyserman et al., 2002; Lipset, 1996; Hofstede, 1980); views of punishment and cooperation (e.g., Gächter, Renner, & Sefton, 2008; Herrmann, Thöni, and Gächter, 2008; Fehr & Gächter, 2002); and motivations to conform

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4 This section relies on findings articulated in the committee’s commissioned paper on evolving conceptions of learning by Vossoughi, Bang, and Marin (2021).

Suggested Citation:"2 Background." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2022. The Future of Education Research at IES: Advancing an Equity-Oriented Science. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/26428.
×

(e.g., Kim & Markus, 1999). In addition, scholars have increasingly demonstrated that there are significant cultural differences in core understandings and reasoning patterns of school-related phenomena such as biology (e.g., Taverna et al., 2020; ojalehto et al., 2017; Washinawatok et al., 2017; Ross et al., 2007; Atran, Medin, & Ross, 2005; Medin & Atran, 2004) and mathematics (e.g., Hu et al., 2018; Saxe, 2015). This groundswell of evidence from multiple disciplinary and methodological traditions has significant consequences for research on learning and education processes, calling to task theoretical and methodological constructs that do not engage cultural variation as fundamental to science (e.g., Brady, Fryberg, & Shoda, 2018). Work that does not carefully engage cultural variation easily participates in the perpetuation of a science based in White middle-class norms projected as universalist claims.

The field’s response to the sobering recognition that there is significant work to do to understand human diversity has been varied. Much of the field has looked to tighten methodological rigor (e.g., as a response to the “replication crisis”; see Shrout & Rodgers, 2018; Maxwell, Lau, & Howard, 2015; Open Science Collaboration, 2015), such as through preregistration efforts (e.g., Simmons et al., 2021; see also Pham & Oh, 2021), and to increase sample diversity (e.g., Amir & McAuliffe, 2020). Others, however, are proposing new methodological approaches and applications (e.g., Zirkel, Garcia, & Murphy, 2015) as well as careful reconsideration of what should be observed (e.g. Barrett, 2020).

While the overrepresentation of “WEIRD” individuals in psychological research resulted in universalist theories of cognition based on narrow samples, its overreliance on skewed population samples reproduced conceptions of cultural variation as a deviation from presumed singular pathways of learning (Lee, 2009; Nasir et al., 2006). As a result of lack of diversity in samples and researchers (Medin et al., 2017), scientific instruments and measures of intelligence have often projected deficit conceptions across cultural communities, with Western researchers presuming their own frames of reference as the universal norm (Medin & Bang, 2014). Research within this deficit paradigm has been used “as the underlying warrant for the ideology of white supremacy” (Lee et al., 2020), justifying the subjugation of Indigenous and non-Western peoples whose thought processes were framed as inferior or “primitive” (Bang, 2016; Medin & Bang, 2014), with particular consequence for the education sciences.

This deficit stance typically fails to inquire into external and structural factors: “How schools are organized to prevent learning, inequalities in the political economy of education, and oppressive macro-policies and practices in education are all held exculpatory in understanding school failure” (Valencia, 1997, p. 2). Gutiérrez, Morales, and Martinez (2009) showed how “students themselves come to be known as the problem rather than a population of people who are experiencing problems in the educational

Suggested Citation:"2 Background." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2022. The Future of Education Research at IES: Advancing an Equity-Oriented Science. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/26428.
×

system” (Gutiérrez, Morales, & Martinez, 2009, p. 218). Similarly, Nasir and colleagues (2006) described the everyday implications of the cultural deficit stance for youth, who must learn to manage multiple developmental tasks, both the ordinary tasks of life-course development and the tasks that involve managing sources of stress rooted in particular forms of institutional stigmatization due to assumptions regarding race, poverty, language variation, gender, and disability (Spencer, 1999, 1987; Burton, Allison & Obeidallah, 1995). Such stigmatization limits access to opportunities (e.g., schooling, work, etc.) across the life course for certain groups of youth (Nasir et al., 2006, pp. 489–490).

Despite the well-established role of interactional and structural factors in education outcomes, deficit stances typically treat the individual as their unit of analysis and have thus been shown to perpetuate a view of human learning in which outcomes “ultimately depend on [students’] own individual worth and effort (Varenne & McDermott, 1998)” (Artiles, 2009). Marin (2020) conceptualized units of analysis as theoretically informed “containers” or “bundles” of segmented information that “reflect researchers’ ideas about what counts in knowledge building and meaning making processes” (p. 285). Conceptions of learning as an individual accomplishment frequently shape low expectations and levels of instruction, leading to unequal outcomes that are then used to confirm artificial deficiencies in students (Diaz & Flores, 2001). As Sengupta-Irving (2021) argued, “The legacy of these discourses is that they compel stratification—they create ‘smart’ or ‘dumb,’ ‘success’ or ‘failure,’ ‘desirable’ or ‘undesirable’” (p. 188). There is increasing consensus and evidence that challenging deficit stances requires units of analysis that move beyond the individual to include careful attention to the cultural tools, sources of pedagogical and social support, forms of psychological safety and belonging, valued ways of knowing and being, and access to resources and opportunities that mediate students’ experiences both within schools and across contexts (Sengupta-Irving, 2021; Marin, 2020; Bang & Vossoughi, 2016; Artiles, 2009; Gutiérrez, Morales, & Martinez, 2009; Nasir et al., 2006; Lee, 2003; Rogoff, 2003; Diaz & Flores, 2001; Cole, 1998; Moll, 1992). Lee, Spencer, and Harpalani (2003) illustrated how the presence or absence of such resources shapes the risks as well as protective factors that all human beings must learn to manage in ways that facilitate positive outcomes across the life course.

This stance brings three important ideas into view:

  • “At risk” is not a trait or category of person but a fundamental human experience that is distributed unequally within a racially and economically stratified society.
  • Understanding cultural repertoires of resilience and resurgence, particularly within communities sustaining cultural lifeways in the face of oppression and erasure, leads to a more agentive and ad-
Suggested Citation:"2 Background." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2022. The Future of Education Research at IES: Advancing an Equity-Oriented Science. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/26428.
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Thus, expanding the unit of analysis beyond the individual also widens the focus of intervention from individuals to environments and systems, notions that IES has attempted to address in its topic structure over time (see Chapter 5). Arguments for widening units of analysis also have important practice advantages given that education is ultimately an interactional activity. Importantly, equity efforts that eschew overt deficit stances can nevertheless perpetuate similar ideologies through narrow, culturally normative conceptions of learning goals and processes.

Upon reviewing this body of evidence, the committee identified an important departure from the conceptions of learning that held sway at the outset of IES. Consistent with the committee’s identification of equity as a crosscutting theme undergirding our analytic work, we determined that efforts aimed at supporting “fair, just, and impartial” research in education need also to account for latent deficit framing at all levels (Executive Order 13985, 2021). Consequently, the committee used these updated frameworks as a guidepost through which to understand how IES can meet its equity mandates, both in ESRA and in President Biden’s Executive Order, while reflecting the leading edge of scholarship on learning. Throughout this report, the committee brings these scholarly perspectives to bear on existing challenges and potential responses for IES.

Methods and Approaches to Conducting Research

As noted earlier in this chapter, the key organizing principle for IES at its formation was the central importance of answering questions of efficacy and effectiveness to elevate student achievement. Consistent with this organizing principle, the randomized controlled trial has consistently been the preferred method for studies funded by IES, though other quasi-experimental methods have also been supported by IES since its inception. Over time, however, the need for quasi-experimental approaches has only been made clearer. Further, the rise of mixed methods research has been a development over the past two decades that can inform the next two decades of IES initiatives. Mixed methods designs offer powerful tools for examining complex social phenomena and systems in education. As

Suggested Citation:"2 Background." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2022. The Future of Education Research at IES: Advancing an Equity-Oriented Science. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/26428.
×

Tashakkori and Creswell (2007) argued, mixed methods involve research in which the investigator “collects and analyzes data, integrates the findings, and draws inferences using both qualitative and quantitative approaches or methods in a single study or program of inquiry” (p. 4). DeCuir-Gunby and Schutz (2017) characterized mixed methods research pragmatically as combining approaches and research methods to solve problems.

The power behind mixed methods research lies with integration. For example, qualitative methods can inform the development or refinement of quantitative instruments or interventions, and quantitative data can inform sampling procedures for naturalistic observations, interviews, or case studies (e.g., O’Cathain, Murphy, & Nicholl, 2010). The specific approaches researchers can use to integrate qualitative and quantitative research procedures operate at three levels: at the study design level, methods level, and interpretation and reporting levels (Creswell & Plano Clark, 2018; DeCuir-Gunby & Schutz, 2017; O’Cathain, Murphy, & Nicholl, 2010). At the study design level, integration occurs through three basic mixed methods designs—exploratory sequential, explanatory sequential, and convergent, as well as various combinations of these (Nastasi et al., 2007). Integration at the methods level occurs through linking approaches to the collection and analysis of data. According to Creswell (2013), linking occurs in several ways: (1) connecting—when one type of data links with the other through the sampling frame; (2) building—when results from one data collection procedure inform the data collection approach of the other; (3) merging—when data from qualitative and quantitative collection procedures are brought together into a single database; and (4) embedding—when qualitative data collection and quantitative data collection are recurrently linked at multiple points in time (Creswell et al., 2011). At the interpretation and reporting level, integration occurs through narrative construction, data transformation, and joint display (Creswell & Plano Clark, 2017; Fetters, Curry, & Creswell, 2013).

IES AT 20: NOW WHAT?

When the issues above are considered in relationship to one another, it is clear that the world of education research has changed dramatically in the years since 2002. Educators are facing different, but no less urgent, challenges; researchers are building upon a constantly expanding knowledge base (much of it funded by NCER and NCSER); and the modes by which education stakeholders engage and interact with one another are continuously developing. NCER and NCSER undeniably laid the foundation for much of this growth. One way to think about the role that IES has played, and the challenge now facing it, is through the concept of knowledge infrastructures (Hirschman, 2021; Edwards, 2019, 2010). Sociologists have used the idea of knowledge infrastructures to explain how fields produce

Suggested Citation:"2 Background." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2022. The Future of Education Research at IES: Advancing an Equity-Oriented Science. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/26428.
×

codified ways of generating and sharing specific kinds of knowledge about the world, often through the collection and analysis of similar kinds of data over time. Knowledge infrastructures have their affordances—allowing concerted effort toward producing new knowledge in a domain and fostering consensus—but they also have their disadvantages. As Hirschman (2021) described, “Past priorities shape existing knowledge infrastructures that in turn channel researcher attention toward some problems and away from others” (p. 742). These initial priorities may become “locked in” and limit the kinds of knowledge that are generated. It is easy to see the parallel to the situation facing IES. Its initial design choices (i.e., focusing on experimental designs, prioritizing academic student outcomes) have fostered tremendous knowledge generation in domains that lend themselves to such parameters. At the same time, the infrastructures that have facilitated rapid knowledge accumulation in some areas have also limited the kinds of questions that have been readily answered over the past 20 years. IES has an opportunity to set a course that continues the tradition it initially established while also broadening the kinds of research that it supports, with the goal of helming a next generation of equitable, useful education research. With several strategic shifts, this committee believes that NCER and NCSER can continue their inimitable leadership role in supporting an education research enterprise that truly meets the needs of students in all their complexity.

In the next chapters, we describe the current structure of NCER and NCSER at IES, detailing how funding competitions are organized and implemented, and how different topics and issues have been funded since 2002. In Chapters 4 and 5, we propose an updated matrix of project types (sometimes referred to as “goals”) by research topics, in response to our charge to identify critical problems and issues that IES should address in its research funding. We address the remaining elements of our charge in Chapters 6 through 8, focusing on methods and measures, training, and the request for applications process. We draw together recommendations intended to enable our suggestions to IES in Chapter 9.

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Suggested Citation:"2 Background." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2022. The Future of Education Research at IES: Advancing an Equity-Oriented Science. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/26428.
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Page 39
Suggested Citation:"2 Background." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2022. The Future of Education Research at IES: Advancing an Equity-Oriented Science. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/26428.
×
Page 40
Suggested Citation:"2 Background." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2022. The Future of Education Research at IES: Advancing an Equity-Oriented Science. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/26428.
×
Page 41
Suggested Citation:"2 Background." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2022. The Future of Education Research at IES: Advancing an Equity-Oriented Science. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/26428.
×
Page 42
Suggested Citation:"2 Background." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2022. The Future of Education Research at IES: Advancing an Equity-Oriented Science. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/26428.
×
Page 43
Suggested Citation:"2 Background." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2022. The Future of Education Research at IES: Advancing an Equity-Oriented Science. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/26428.
×
Page 44
Suggested Citation:"2 Background." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2022. The Future of Education Research at IES: Advancing an Equity-Oriented Science. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/26428.
×
Page 45
Suggested Citation:"2 Background." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2022. The Future of Education Research at IES: Advancing an Equity-Oriented Science. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/26428.
×
Page 46
Suggested Citation:"2 Background." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2022. The Future of Education Research at IES: Advancing an Equity-Oriented Science. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/26428.
×
Page 47
Suggested Citation:"2 Background." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2022. The Future of Education Research at IES: Advancing an Equity-Oriented Science. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/26428.
×
Page 48
Suggested Citation:"2 Background." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2022. The Future of Education Research at IES: Advancing an Equity-Oriented Science. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/26428.
×
Page 49
Suggested Citation:"2 Background." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2022. The Future of Education Research at IES: Advancing an Equity-Oriented Science. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/26428.
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In 2002 Congress passed the Education Sciences Reform Act of 2002 (ESRA), authorizing the creation of the Institute of Education Sciences (IES) as the research, evaluation, statistics, and assessment arm of the Department of Education, and crystallizing the federal government's commitment to providing national leadership in expanding fundamental knowledge and understanding of education from early childhood through postsecondary study. IES shares information on the condition and progress of education in the United States, including early childhood education and special education; educational practices that support learning and improve academic achievement and access to educational opportunities for all students; and the effectiveness of federal and other education programs.

In response to a request from the Institute of Education Sciences, this report provides guidance on the future of education research at the National Center for Education Research and the National Center for Special Education Research, two centers directed by IES. This report identifies critical problems and issues, new methods and approaches, and new and different kinds of research training investments.

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