The Spencer Foundation awarded its first-ever $3.5 million Transformative Research Grant this year, and a professor in MSU’s College of Education was chosen as the recipient.
Noreen Naseem Rodríguez, an assistant professor of elementary education and educational justice, will lead a multidisciplinary team of co-principal investigators (co-PIs) from five other institutions across the country, to conduct a large-scale study on community-driven initiatives to teach Asian American Studies in K-12 classrooms.
Their study across five states will explore how communities advocate for curricular policies mandating the teaching of Asian American studies and how these policies get implemented in schools and impact student learning. Ultimately, the project aims to develop supports for families and communities to successfully advocate for curricular changes and for policymakers, systems leaders and educators to successfully implement ethnic studies courses in ways that increase learning and civic engagement.
The study takes place in the context of national politicized attacks on inclusive education, such as book bans and laws prohibiting authentic and truthful history.
“Despite substantial evidence that well-designed ethnic studies courses can have a positive, lasting impact on students’ life trajectories, we still lack an understanding of how community and legislative efforts to include ethnic studies in the curriculum get translated into classrooms, particularly in different political contexts,” says Rodríguez.
“Our project proposes to provide teachers, policymakers and communities with the knowledge, resources and tools to implement ethnic studies curricula that transform learning at scale and allow students to dream and act for a better future.”
Spencer’s Transformative Research Grant (TRG) funds innovative, methodologically diverse, interdisciplinary, collaborative research on education with the goal of transforming education systems for equity. TRGs focus is on projects of up to five years in duration that identify a clear challenge, problem or opportunity of equity in education and will have transformative, system-level impacts. Only teams that have received a Spencer Vision Grant, which supports the collaborative planning of large-scale research projects, can apply for a TRG.
The awarded team includes scholars with diverse methodological and disciplinary expertise, including ethnic studies, curriculum studies, K-12 policy, learning sciences, case study analysis, survey methodology and network analysis. The team consists of Rodríguez and co-PIs Sohyun An at Kennesaw State University, Esther Kim at College of William and Mary, Soo-yong Byun at Pennsylvania State University, Michael Brown at University of Michigan and Jennifer Higgs at University of California, Davis.
The Spencer Foundation has been a leading funder of education research since 1971 and is the only national foundation focused exclusively on supporting education research.
LEARN MORE about support for the College of Education by contacting Senior Director of Development Eric Sturdy at sturdyjr@msu.edu or by calling (517) 432-1983.