2012 Annual Meeting
Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada
The AERA Professional Development and Training Program is pleased to offer two courses that focus on developing research proposals for federal grants. Held during the 2012 Annual Meeting in Vancouver, these courses are led by Senior Agency Staff from the Institute for Education Sciences (IES) and the National Science Foundation (NSF). These courses will provide an overview of specific funding opportunities, outline essential elements of successful research proposals, and discuss proposal review processes. Participation in each of these courses is by application only. Course applications must be received by February 1, 2012. Please see the course descriptions below for application procedures and further course information. Direct any questions about the AERA professional development and training courses to [email protected].
Course Descriptions and Application Procedures
PDC12: Writing an Application for an IES Grant: A Workshop Application Instructions
This course will provide instruction and advice on writing a successful application to the Institute of Education Sciences’ Education Research Grants Program (84.305A) and Special Education Research Grants Program (84.324A). The course will focus on (1) the topics that make up these two grant programs, (2) the goal structure under which these programs operate, and (3) the four sections of the Research Narrative (Significance, Research Plan, Personnel, and Resources) that comprise the most important part of the grant application. Direct instruction on these topics will be accompanied by review of examples, application to participants’ own work, and discussion. Participants are expected to be familiar with the IES Request for Applications (see http://ies.ed.gov/funding/), to have the skills needed for such research, and to bring a research idea and outline of a research plan.
PDC14: Developing a Competitive Educational Research Proposal for NSF’s Division of Research on Learning Application Instructions
The course is aimed for researchers interested in submitting an education research proposal to the National Science Foundation (NSF) Division of Research on Learning (DRL). The course will focus on characteristics of DRL’s three major research programs: Research and Evaluation in Education, Science and Engineering (REESE); Discovery Research K–12 (DRK–12); and Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER, an NSF-wide initiative). It will include discussion of the contexts of STEM education research in NSF; provide an overview of NSF’s proposal review process and merit review criteria; and examine and discuss cases of competitive proposals. Participants are asked to write a one-page summary of a research idea in advance of the course. Participants will discuss their summary with DRL program officers and other attendees, as well as brief passages from proposals to illustrate strengths and weaknesses in addressing the NSF merit review criteria.