Research and Community Engagement

The internationally prominent and award-winning Education Department faculty members have been leaders of research projects competitively funded through federal agencies such as the National Science Foundation and the Institute for Educational Sciences, and through national research foundations such as the Noyce Foundation, the Spencer Foundation, and the W.T. Grant Foundation. Additionally, the faculty’s path-setting scholarship, research programs, and teacher professional development projects have been supported by many other state, regional, and local foundations as well as individuals making small and large donations .
 
Education Department faculty members draw upon foundations in the social sciences and humanities and deploy qualitative and quantitative research methodologies to solve pressing challenges for the field. Department faculty members pursue interdisciplinary socio-cultural research methodologies and approaches that elicit the lived experiences of research participants through collaborative, participatory and action research methods. Many faculty members focus their research on various aspects of language, literacy, discourse, digital media, and/or socio-cultural contexts in the social construction of learning in the disciplines and in research on teacher education.

Our investigations of the social, cultural, and linguistic strengths of youth and their communities provide foundations for transformative and liberating pedagogical practices in science, math, English language arts, and social sciences.
 
Education Department faculty members engage in a variety of collaborations and partnerships, whether working closely with one another in research aimed at improving opportunities for underserved youth, or reaching across departments and disciplines to bring together teams of scholars for innovative, cutting-edge, and transformative projects aimed at the most challenging problems facing educators and underserved youth. We have sustained partnerships with schools and districts to recreate teaching and learning aligned with the sorts of interdisciplinary, field changing research programs that we know are necessary to enable public schooling to achieve its promise in contributing to building a just democracy with communities of ethical, knowledgeable, engaged residents.

Please see our individual faculty pages for research center affiliations and specific publications, and please feel free to contact us with any questions you may have about our research.