Funding to support collaborative education research projects that build the capacity of partnerships to make educational change.

Set up in 1971, the Spencer Foundation is a US-based funder of education research and wishes to increase opportunities for all as well as improve education in order to impact positively on people’s lives.

The Foundation’s Research-Practice Partnerships: Collaborative Research for Educational Change programme provides support for education research projects that engage in collaborative and participatory partnerships. The scheme is specifically intended to build the capacity of partnerships to make educational change. Funding is available for:

• Research activities.
• Research infrastructure.
• Outreach, communications and relationship building.
• Capacity development.

It is recognised that partnerships are an important approach to knowledge generation and the improvement of education. Partnership work encourages diverse forms of expertise and perspectives, across practitioners as well as scholars and disciplines, in respect of knowledge generation around pressing problems of practice and/or policy. Many key problems of practice and policy require multiple perspectives and long-term engagement if sustainable and systemic change is to occur.

Over the long term, the Foundation anticipates that research conducted will result in new insights into the processes, practices, routines and policies that improve education for learners, educators, families, communities, and institutions where learning and teaching take place (eg schools, universities, community centres, parks, museums and other workplaces).

Application is open to partnerships between researchers and a broad array of practitioners (eg school districts, county offices of education, state educational organisations, universities, community-based organisations and other social sectors that significantly impact learners’ lives). As such, the scheme is open to design-based research teams, networked improvement communities, place-based research alliances and other partnership arrangements.

Principal Investigators (PIs) and Co-PIs applying must have an earned doctorate in an academic discipline or professional field, or demonstrated professional experience appropriate for this scheme.

PIs must be affiliated with a non-profit organisation or public/governmental institution that is willing to serve as the administering organisation if the grant is awarded, such as a non-profit or public college, university, school district, research facility or other non-profit organisation.

Proposals are accepted from the US and internationally.

Funding is a maximum of $400,000 and can last for up to three years.

There is a two-stage application process consisting of a mandatory pre-proposal stage followed by an invited full application.