UW-Madison awarded $5 million to train education researchers

A $5 million grant from the U.S. Department of Education will enhance UW–Madison’s capacity to conduct high-quality research on practical questions in education and will help prepare a new generation of scholars in the social sciences with expertise on “what works” in education.

The five-year grant will fund an interdisciplinary training program in the education sciences to be housed at the Wisconsin Center for Education Research (WCER) in the School of Education. Adam Gamoran, professor of sociology and educational policy studies and director of WCER, will direct the program.

Funded by the Education Department’s Institute of Education Sciences, the program will accommodate 30 fellows from the disciplines of sociology, economics, psychology, political science and social welfare. The faculty who will provide the training will include 20 scholars from social sciences, education, public affairs and social work.

The program aims to attract the most talented students in the social sciences to focus their early training and doctoral dissertations in the education sciences. Two-year advanced fellowships will enable top students to work on dissertations that both advance their disciplines and address questions on education policy and practice.

“We’re grateful to be given this opportunity,” Gamoran says. “This award is a testimony to the strength of graduate training at UW–Madison and to its tradition of interdisciplinary collaboration between education and the social sciences.”

“This is an exciting award because support for doctoral students learning to conduct research in education is scarce and fiercely competitive,” adds Charles Read, dean of the School of Education. “It’s a tribute to the leadership of Adam Gamoran.”

The program will focus on two distinct themes: the design and implementation of field-based randomized studies in schools and other complex settings; and the statistical analysis of quantitative survey and observational and assessment data on education, with special attention to questions of causal inference.

WCER is one of the nation’s oldest, largest and most productive education research institutes, and it provides a strong interdisciplinary infrastructure for the research to be undertaken through the training program.