Reimagining and Rebuilding our Education R&D Infrastructure
It is clear that the ongoing destruction of the Education Research and Development infrastructure that we have built over the last decades in this country is causing damage to society that will be felt for years. However, it is also clear that we cannot simply wish that the damage didn’t happen, or that we will somehow recreate the same system that is being destroyed.
Instead, it is time to envision a new Education R&D infrastructure. This new infrastructure will build on what we have learned, while also overcoming the weaknesses of what was. It is only by providing a new and compelling vision that we can expect to marshall the forces necessary to create the Education R&D infrastructure that we need to inform the education of our current and future students.
This was the topic of a recent gathering on the future of education research that I had the privilege of attending. In addition to envisioning the future, it was also a chance to objectively consider what education research has contributed to our understanding of teaching and learning, and where research has fallen short. Considering both successes and shortcomings allows a fresh way to envision the future.
Here are some of my thoughts, and where they could lead us.
First, the contributions of education research: We have learned much about how students learn over the past decades of education research. In the area of reading this is most obviously distilled by what is now called the Science of Reading. However, there is far more that we have learned. We know what effective early childhood mathematics education should look like. We know how to effectively use multiple representations and interactive representations to teach key math concepts, which has influenced products such as Desmos, PhET, and Gizmos, among others. The Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) were explicitly based on education research, and other research shows the effectiveness of implementing these standards. And we now know more about creating research collaborations across different sectors (researchers, districts, providers, community) than we ever did, as shown by this recent example based on years of prior research. And this is just my small, biased sample–the fruits of education research go far beyond what I have listed.
“But wait”, you may be thinking, “if education research has made so much progress, then why do NAEP and other measures continually show disappointing levels of student achievement in both math and literacy?”
This is a good question, and to answer it seriously requires that we take a close look at where (and how) research has had a positive impact on learning, and where (and how) the impact has been less than what one would expect. Taking the two together we can build on what we know to increase the effectiveness of education research.
Let us start with some examples where education research has had an impact. The first example is the aforementioned Science of Reading, which has recently resulted in a sea change in how reading is taught. Another is in the (also previously mentioned ) NGSS, which is having significant impacts in how science is taught in K-12. The third, and less obvious example of impact is found in individual efforts, such as the recent success in Alabama Math. While this success is (a) flying under the radar for many and (b) is often presented as though their successful approach came out of nowhere, the Alabama approach reads like a greatest hits of mathematics education research: strong standards alignment and associated teacher professional development, the use of manipulatives, multiple methods of problem solving, number talks, data driven decision making, improving attitudes toward math, and effective coaching are all based on research.
So what allowed the success of the Science of Reading, NGSS and Alabama Math? If research was so effective in these cases, why not in others?
Consider these two reasons:
Research silos: traditionally education research occurs in relative silos. While there is some collaboration across researchers and between researchers and other sectors, such collaboration has not been baked into the approach. In general, individual research teams publish their own findings, typically using data that is inaccessible to others, and often using their own terminology that makes aggregation across research studies difficult. Furthermore, there has traditionally been a disincentive for academic researchers to collaborate: university professors often get tenure based on independent work and being the first (or even better, only) author on publications, which cuts against deep collaborations.
Disconnection from local needs: while there have been significant efforts to engage in research that is highly responsive to local needs, this approach is just coming into the mainstream and is still somewhat rare. And once more, many academic researchers have traditionally found a disincentive against engaging in “applied” research: many grants, academic journals, and approvals for tenure are based on “advancing science”, and application of science toward meeting teachers' real needs is often viewed as less academically important.
Examples where research had impact at scale is the result of people doing the difficult work of understanding what the research says about learning, drawing disparate studies into a uniform framework that can be applied to address a pressing problem, and figuring out how to apply this research in a way that is actionable for real teachers in real classrooms.
Can we envision a future where that wasn’t difficult work? What if
there was a large-scale infrastructure that not only encouraged data sharing and collaboration across researchers, but required it?
research funding was based on meeting the real needs of districts and teachers?
I posit that just these two changes alone would result in a sea change in how research is conducted, in how research can inform classroom practice (and how practice would inform research), and ultimately, in the effectiveness of classroom materials in increasing student learning and achievement.
And, somewhat unintuitively, a change to how educational research is funded and conducted on the national level will result in research that is far more applicable at the local level.
Let me explain this last point: The mantra for conducting effective research is understanding “what works, for whom, and under what conditions.” However, due to research currently being conducted in silos, with little-to-no sharing of data, and with local teacher needs taking a backseat to “pure science”, it is difficult (actually, near impossible) to generalize across the many hundreds of studies in a particular area and answer the question of “what works, for whom, and under what conditions.”
But imagine a national infrastructure where data could be aggregated, not just at the highest levels, but for different learners in different conditions (e.g. urban, suburban, and rural students; multilingual learners; students with varied home cultures; students of different past achievement profiles, etc.). And imagine highly localized research studies that can not only build on this infrastructure (e.g. by creating a set of research questions highly aligned with local needs, and based on the applicable (and accessible) data from past studies), but can then add to this infrastructure. We would have a virtuous cycle where local research is informed by national data, and the results of that research not only inform local decisions, but feeds back into the national dataset.
This virtuous cycle cannot occur by directing education research at the state or local level: in fact, keeping all decisions at the local level is a recipe for increasing the silos in education, and ensuring that education research does not have the impact that it could. The only way to ensure that education research is impactful, effective, and efficient is to require that studies that meet local needs inform the field at a national level.
While the current slashes to funding of education research are short-sighted and unproductive, let us all work together to not only restore education funding to the level it deserves, but to ensure that future generations of education research are positioned to have the broad-based, yet local, impact that it is capable of. Let us fund an Education R&D infrastructure that supports data sharing and aggregation while bringing educators as full partners into the R&D process.
