Reauthorize the Education Sciences Act and Fund IES
Reauthorize The Education Sciences Reform Act and fund the Institute for Education Science. Our teachers need usable knowledge about how children learn and how to teach them better. Should a teacher give homework to first graders and if so, what type? Do grades enhance learning, increase effort, or motivate students? When and under what conditions should a teacher praise students’ work? What are the best strategies for introducing fractions to fourth graders or teaching high school students who failed to learn fractions earlier? How can we help hyperactive children pay attention? Teachers make decisions about such issues daily and we need research to point clear directions for their critically important decision making. The federal government and higher education need to apply the same urgency of concern about this area, as they do to making basic science research more useful to health practitioners.
In medicine, researchers are developing translational research, which is often identified as “bench to bedside” work. Translational research recognizes the gap between basic research in the lab and the practice of medicine that can make a difference in health outcomes. The idea is to produce better medications, improve diagnostic and treatment strategies, and enhance health through the application of information from basic science research. In education, not unlike medicine, vital knowledge too often remains with the researchers and is unavailable to the professionals who are in positions to help children and youth. We have a similar “clinical lab to classroom” gap.
A new agenda for IES could envision a similar approach to cooperation and collaboration in education research. Grants to basic researchers in cognition and neuroscience could include an ‘outreach’ component, much like what is done with science research in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM). Grants to neuroscientists might require them to work with teachers and schools as they conduct their basic research. Social scientists might be encouraged to apply the findings from basic research to the contexts where students learn: the home, the neighborhood and the classroom. And teacher educators could be funded to translate the findings from applied psychologists and neuroscientists into how aspiring teachers should teach children and youth.
Funding will be critical. Currently the funding for IES is less than 1% of all funds appropriated to the Department of Education. For fiscal year 2008, the Department of Education received $59.2 billion in total discretionary funding; IES received $546,105,000. In contrast, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) has made translational research a priority. By 2010 NIH expects to have 60 centers of translational research supported by a budget of $500 million per year. And that is only a fraction of the research dollars going into health care research. We need to fund the same knowledge production in education.
This post was submitted by Mary Brabeck.
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