October 5, 2000 NSF PR 00-72
Media contact:Charles S. Drum (703) 292-8070/[email protected]
Program contact:John Cherniavsky(703) 292-5136/[email protected]
FEDERAL AGENCIES JOIN HANDS FOR SECOND YEAR OF LEADING-EDGE EDUCATION RESEARCH
The National Science Foundation (NSF), the Department of Education (ED), and the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD) have announced the second round of awards under the Interagency Education Research Initiative (IERI), supporting research aimed at improving education in reading, math and science from preschool through high school.
The new awards, totaling $28 million, will fund seven new research studies in six states, as well as 14 planning initiatives around the U.S., all focused on the most effective and feasible methods for teaching and learning in mathematics, reading and science in pre-kindergarten through grade 12.
"How well we educate our children depends in no small part on how well we understand education itself," says Neal Lane, the President's Science Advisor. "In almost every area of our national life, from health to business, the investment in research is substantial. IERI is a good first step toward improving our national investment in reading, math, and science education research."
"Historically, investments in broad-based, integrated educational research have been woefully inadequate," says Judith Sunley, interim assistant director for Education and Human Resources at NSF. "The infusion of this funding and the cooperation of the agencies today allows us to integrate research in such areas as learning processes in reading, math and science education--research that previously would have been conducted in unconnected projects supported by separate agencies."
One of the stated goals of IERI is to conduct preK-12 research over a long period in a wide range of instructional settings.
"An important feature of this year's competition is that only proposals that met certain benchmarks were funded," said Reid Lyon, Chief of the Child Development and Behavior Branch at NICHD. "All of these research studies meet high standards of methodological rigor, are of sufficient scale, integrate technology, and will be conducted by interdisciplinary research teams."
Several of this year's projects examine such factors as reading motivation, linguistics and the ability to understand more complex scientific concepts. For example, three projects, at the University of Maryland College Park, the University of Miami, and the University of Michigan, are examining the linkages between literacy skills and the acquisition of scientific concepts in diverse school populations. Two of the planning initiatives are aimed at collecting, integrating, and using data across projects.
"The combination of planning and full-scale research grants will provide an optimal mix for the creation of a strong research portfolio," said James Griffin, program director from ED's Office of Educational Research and Improvement. "These studies are very difficult to pull off, so we need to nurture partnerships between investigators and school systems, and be prepared to adequately fund them when they are ready to go to scale."
Last year, the first 14 IERI awards were made to 12 institutions in nine states, supporting research in education strategies to improve teaching and learning in grades preK-12.
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Attachment: List of 2000 awards
INTERAGENCY EDUCATION RESEARCH INITIATIVE AWARDS FOR 2000
University of Maryland College ParkJohn Guthrie Amount: $3,414,483 Increasing Reading Comprehension, Motivation and Science Knowledge through Concept-Oriented Reading Instruction in a District-wide Experiment
University of Georgia Research Foundation Inc Linda Labbo Amount: $5,551,059Best Practices - Teacher Preparation - Technology: Connections that Enhance Children's Literacy Acquisition and Reading Achievement
University of MiamiOkhee Lee Amount: $2,500,000Instructional Intervention to Promote Science and Literacy for Linguistically Diverse Elementary Students
Old Dominion Research Foundation, Norfolk, Va. Danielle McNamara Amount: $3,196,913Promoting Active Reading Strategies to Improve Students' Understanding of Science
University of Illinois Urbana-ChampaignKevin Miller Amount: $1,824,224Representing and Learning from Classroom Processes
Regents of University of Michigan , Ann Arbor Nancy Songer Amount: $4,569,681BioKIDS: Kids' Inquiry of Diverse Species
University of Georgia Research Foundation Inc Steven Stahl Amount: $5,283,437The Development of Fluent and Automatic Reading: Precursor to Learning from Text
Stevens Institute of Technology, Hoboken, N.J. Edward Friedman Amount: $490,713Applying Technology and Triarchic Enhancement to Instruction and Assessment in a School Science Curriculum: Air-Traffic Control, Earthquake, and Air- Pollution Analysis
University of North Carolina, GreensboroRichard Basom Amount: $100,000Testing a research/technology-based delivery system to improve student performance in mathematics and science in middle schools in rural, high-poverty communities
Education Development Center, Newton, Mass.Jeanne Century Amount: $118,363Looking Inside the Black Box: Classroom Practice that Supports High Achievement in Both Science and Reading
University of California San DiegoMichael Cole Amount: $118,496Coordinating Educational Institutions for Sustained Academic Success
Educational Testing Service, Princeton, N.J.Drew Gitomer Amount: $106,411Professional Development Support Systems for Mathematics and Science Teaching
Concord Consortium, Concord, Mass.Paul Horwitz Amount: $102,239Modeling Across the Curriculum
Center for Occupational Research and Development,Waco, TexasDarrell Hull Amount: $104,351Planning a Research Program to Study How to Improve the Effectiveness of Using Telecommunications to Teach Science
University of California Los AngelesAlison Imbens-Bailey Amount: $109,162Building Bridges to Student and Teacher Learning: Early Literacy Assessment and Intervention
University of Colorado BoulderWalter Kintsch Amount: $107,060Scalable and Sustainable Technologies for Reading Instruction and Assessment
SRI International, Menlo Park, Calif.Barbara Means Amount: $111,000Planning for a System of Principled Assessment Designs of Inquiry (PADI)
SRI InternationalJeremy Roschelle Amount: $116,123Planning a Rigorous Experimental Trial of SimCalc's Approach to Increasing Access to Complex Mathematical Ideas
Univerity of Illinois Urbana-ChampaignFrank Rusch Amount: $99,999Planning Grant for National Data Collection Center
National Opinion Research Center, Chicago, Ill. Barbara Schneider Amount: $109,708Data Research and Development Center (DRDC)
University of Illinois ChicagoTimothy Shanahan Amount: $110,000The Evaluation & Analysis of an Innovative Framework for School Reading
University of Maryland College ParkLinda Valli Amount: $102,078High Quality Teaching of Foundational Skills in Mathematics and Reading
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