Building an Inclusive R&D Ecosystem

Matthew Soldner, Acting Director of IES | April 17, 2024

The following blog is adapted from a talk I gave at the American Educational Research Association's 2024 conference in Philadelphia.

There is no shortage of writing on "inclusive R&D." The work spans decades, disciplines, and geography.

I unearthed one model, offered by Digital Promise, that I particularly appreciated. My crude distillation of their work is that inclusive R&D should:

Be co-led, co-designed, and co-researched by an inclusive set of collaborators that include those who are meant to benefit and who might be affected;
Include students as collaborators, and should center their voices and perspectives in the process;
Actively engage those who have experience applicable to the focus of the research in its conduct;
Pay consistent attention to issues of equity throughout the research process, so that the work is genuinely collaborative and both honors and reflects each participant's particular expertise;
Include broad measures of success, including but not limited to academic achievement; and
Result in sustainable community capacity.

As I started thinking through the breadth and depth of IES-sponsored R&D, much of which I believe is truly excellent, I found myself wondering whether we might be missing the mark.

But then I reminded myself that IES is not alone in the work of building an inclusive R&D ecosystem. What matters is that IES be a full participant in a dialogue that isn't focused on single projects, individual funding streams, or single entities but is instead about building a robust national architecture for inclusive R&D that is relentlessly focused on improving outcomes for learners. There's much to consider in that dialogue, including how a more inclusive ecosystem might prepare a diverse education science workforce and engage and benefit the communities that R&D efforts are meant to serve.

IES is committed to moving forward in ways we believe contribute to a future R&D ecosystem that is more inclusive than the ecosystem of today. I'd like to share a few examples.

Diversifying and Expanding the Education Sciences

One of the most important investments IES makes is in the development of the next generation of education scientists. We already do this in several ways, including (1) our Pathways to the Education Sciences program, which awards grants to MSIs and their partners to prepare fellows for doctoral study as early as their junior year in college; (2) our Predoctoral Training Program that provides support during students' doctoral studies and provides opportunities for fellows to conduct research and collaborate with education practitioners; (3) our Postdoctoral Programs in Education and Special Education Research; and (4) our Early Career Development and Mentoring program and Early Career Development and Mentoring Program for Faculty at MSIs, which provide support and mentoring for early career investigators.

Since 2002, IES has invested nearly $310M in personnel preparation across nearly 200 separate grants, training more than 2200 education scientists. Of course, this is nowhere near the size of NSF's investments. In their Graduate Research Fellowship Program alone, they've requested $341M for FY2025 which would support 2,300 new fellows and continue support to 6,550 others. Across their portfolio of programs dedicated to institutional supports, they've also requested about $122M for programs at HSIs, HBCUs, and TCUs.

We must find ways, both as an Institute and as a community, to increase our investment in education scientists. IES fellows must continue to be trained in high-quality, causal methods of research. They must also be exposed to ways of conducting that research that draw from the best tenets of inclusive R&D. These kinds of investments are field shaping and will bring new people, new perspectives, and new priorities into IES's work, including our process of rigorous peer review.

Engaging and Building Capacity Within Communities

IES can be proud of the ways in which it has brought new voices and new forms of collaboration into the R&D that we support, but we could go much farther on this front.

For more than a decade, IES has invested in researcher-practitioner partnerships (RPPs). We are the nation's single largest investor in education focused RPPs, with more than 70 currently supported through our Regional Educational Labs program. The theory is that this form of collaboration can result in research that is more relevant, useful, and used. We have great examples of that being the case, such as a partnership in Camden in which the Camden City School District partnered with the Camden Coalition of Healthcare Providers and Nemours Children's Health to improve the identification of students experiencing homelessness and connect them with city-wide services and supports.

However, although most if not all our RPPs engage policymakers and practitioners at the state and district level, fewer engage classroom educators. And the number that engage students, families, or community organizations is vanishingly small. This seems to me to be a very natural place for us to drive hard toward collaborative ownership and, for research focused on older students, student voice. This is a framing that would be useful to explore across our investments. For example, NCSER has been asking researchers to demonstrate how they will elevate the voices of people with disabilities in the research process, precisely for the reason of fostering inclusive R&D.

Importantly, our use of RPPs would build collaborators' capacity in the long-term. Although there are instances in which this has happened—we certainly have examples of partnerships that have been sustained (even flourished) beyond the period of a grant or contract—I have questions about the extent to which it is widespread. In the light of very real human and fiscal resource constraints, it remains an open question how we might expand our longstanding work of supporting state and district partners to build sustained capacity within the whole of a community.

Coherent Pathways

Finally, there is an imperative for funders to build pathways for high-quality research that leverage their comparative advantages and reflect their priorities, and then be clear with evidence-builders about how to access those pathways.

There are certainly things that individual funders can do to increase the transparency and accessibility of their funding processes. For example, IES has dramatically increased its outreach to communities of institutions that have not traditionally submitted applications to our main research competitions or served as peer reviewers. This includes presenting at the Department of Education's HBCU Week and participating at annual convenings of faculty and institutional researchers at TCUs.

Even more can be achieved if funders address this need together. For example, some have suggested that, in addition to grants to support causal research, IES should offer grants that primarily support in-depth needs sensing with communities to inform the design of new interventions, practices, or policies that are responsive to their specific context. I unequivocally support that kind of work, and many funders in our ecosystem are interested in supporting this work as well. In contrast, few funders in our ecosystem are interested in (or able to) fund rigorous evaluations of those interventions, practices, or policies once developed. That IES prioritizes the latter doesn't need to be a problem—so long as there is a well-articulated system of research funding with clear on-ramps, off-ramps, and interchanges. If we work together, I believe we can architect an inclusive system of education R&D that supports and values all types of inquiry and their contribution to our shared mission of improving the lives of learners.

Expanding and diversifying the education science workforce, more authentically engaging the communities we seek to serve, and creating coherent pathways for high-quality research are just a few of the steps we'll need to take to build an inclusive R&D ecosystem.