Inside IES Research

This year, we have four student interns who are joining IES from the U.S. Department of State’s Virtual Student Federal Service (VSFS) Program. These doctoral student interns are the first cohort of IES open science interns to work together collaboratively. They will be supporting NCER and NCSER in understanding and communicating about research in education and special education. Under the mentorship of two IES program officers, Helyn Kim and Amy Sussman, the interns will use and refine their knowledge and skills of education research to help us communicate about our work and investments to the broader public, including those who can use the information for practice or policymaking. We asked the interns to tell us about themselves, their research interests, their goals for this internship, and a fun fact.

Stephanie Estrera, Florida State University

Hi y’all, I am a third-year PhD student in developmental psychology at Florida State University and an IES predoctoral fellow. Prior to moving to Tallahassee, Florida and starting my PhD, I graduated with a bachelor’s degree in psychology with a minor in computer science from the University of Texas at Austin (hook’em!). In 2018-20, I was an education volunteer with Peace Corps Philippines, which is an experience that has deeply influenced my current research interests and goals.  Broadly, I am interested in using behavioral genetic methods to examine the direct role of a child’s environment on their reading outcomes. Some of my current work is focused on children’s reading motivation, measurement of family stressors, and the role of the home and school environments on children’s reading development. I believe that the way forward in producing relevant and replicable research is through open science and transparency collaboration. Currently, I am a member of the LDbase team, an NIH-funded data repository and open science resource for educational and developmental science communities.

One of my goals during this internship is to learn best practices for research dissemination for education stakeholders outside of the scientific community. The work conducted by education researchers affects the everyday American, but it can be a challenge to make those findings understandable. As a researcher, I believe it is the scientific community’s duty to disseminate our work in a way that resonates with other educational stakeholders so we can move forward and improve education for all. I'm excited for this internship, because I think it will be an excellent opportunity to hone and practice my science communication skills.

Fun Fact: Outside of my work, I am an ocean-enthusiast and Open Water SCUBA certified! Some of my favorite marine life encounters include whale sharks, manatees, sea turtles, octopuses, and the humble box fish (my favorite reef fish).

Heidi Hines, University of California, Irvine

I am a third-year PhD student in education at the University of California, Irvine. Before starting my PhD program, I worked in the public school system as a school psychologist. My experience as a school psychologist and observing the prevalence of reading difficulties among children led me to become interested in researching early literacy instruction and intervention. My research interests include early literacy for all students, especially those with disabilities. I feel compelled to learn more about research in early literacy and make this research easily accessible to the public to help guide instructional practices.

One of my goals in this internship is to learn more about the strategies used to disseminate research and how those strategies are implemented. Another goal is to increase my skills in sharing research in a practitioner-friendly manner. I’m excited about this internship opportunity as it will provide hands-on experience collaborating with experts and disseminating research.

Fun Fact: I love to run! I ran cross country and track throughout high school and college. I’ve continued to run since then, and I’ve completed 6 full marathons and over a dozen half marathons.

Audra Johnston-Zamora, University of Oregon

I am currently a second-year PhD student at the University of Oregon in the department of special education and clinical services. My educational pursuits have very much been influenced by my own difficult upbringing and experiences in the foster care system. During my own journey towards well-being, I learned about trauma-informed practices, the neurobiological implications of exposure to trauma during early childhood, and the evidenced-based interventions that may serve to buffer those life-long implications. Since then, whether I took on the role of a classroom teacher, coach to other educators, or future researcher, my “why” is and always will be to create a loving, compassionate, healing educational space where all children (and even adults) can thrive.

Through my experiences with this internship, my goal is to develop my communication and research skills. Until recently, even as an educator, I was hardly exposed to empirical research or taught the skills needed to truly understand it. Yet, so many wonderful advances and knowledge about best practices can be understood through research. In this internship, I plan on strengthening my ability to concisely synthesize critical information taken from research studies in an effort to address the research to practice gap.

Fun Fact: I am a Disney fanatic! One year I spent a total of 22 days at Disneyland Park with my family. I have numerous Disney tattoos and dresses, and I can recite the songs and dialogue for Beauty and the Beast from beginning to end.

Bhabika Joshi, Vanderbilt University

I am currently a third-year PhD student in special education at Vanderbilt University, with a focus on quantitative research, culturally and linguistically diverse (CLD) students, and autism. I am a Board Certified Behavior Analyst and have previously served as senior director of clinical services. I earned my master’s in applied behavior analysis and special education from Vanderbilt University in 2020 and hold dual undergraduate degrees in English and communication sciences and disorders (speech language pathology) from The University of Texas at Austin, with a concentration on autism research. In 2018, I undertook a Fulbright fellowship in Nepal, sponsored by the U.S. Department of State.

My research is driven by a deep passion for advancing knowledge in the autism community, including advocating for families and caretakers of children with autism and identifying culturally responsive avenues of support for families and children with autism.  During this internship, I look forward to deepening my understanding of quantitative research methodologies and exploring how they can be applied to support culturally and linguistically diverse children with autism.

Fun Fact: Outside of my professional pursuits, I enjoy reading, writing, hiking, and exploring new places. I am currently training for a trek to Everest Base Camp in December 2024.

This blog was produced by Helyn Kim (helyn.kim@ed.gov), NCER program officer, and Amy Sussman (amy.sussman@ed.gov), NCSER program officer.

IES is pleased to announce the newest set of Statistical and Research Methodology in Education (Stats/Methods) investments: 13 projects, nine of which will create innovative methodological products and four of which will develop toolkits to help education scientists understand and apply recently developed methods in their work. This set of Stats/Methods projects will receive more than $9.3 million in funding over the next three years.   

Projects funded under the Stats/Methods program support the development of products (for example, new and improved methods, toolkits, guidelines, review papers, compendia, curated data resources, and software) that help education scientists as they strive for rigor in their research. The Stats/Methods program has funded several widely used statistical software packages, such as Stan, HLM, and Blimp. Stats/Methods projects have also produced papers and presentations that have advanced the theory and practice of randomized trials, psychometrics, and Bayesian statistics in education.

The latest awards from the Stats/Methods program focus on four different areas to support education research. Collectively, these 13 projects will result in innovative products, including templates, new methods, software, tools, practice guides, visual displays, databases, and language models that researchers can use to improve the rigor of education research.

• Measurement and Value-Added Analyses Projects: These projects help education researchers develop better measurement models of learner, teacher, and school outcomes, so that they can better understand the effectiveness of educational interventions.
  • Resources to Standardize Cost Analysis and Cost-effectiveness Analysis of Educational Interventions is developing a template that will make it simple for education researchers to follow standards when analyzing cost outcomes of their interventions.  
  • Variational Methods and Factor Regularization: Analyzing Complex Large-Scale Assessments with High-Dimensional Covariates is developing methods for analyzing outcomes of national-scale assessments, such as NAEP, in subpopulations and where there are complex dependencies between test items.
  • Expanding the Functionality and Accessibility of Software for Diagnostic Measurement is developing user-friendly software to score educational tests using diagnostic classification models, where test-takers are classified as proficient or non-proficient on a set of skills.
• Causal Inference Projects: These projects help education researchers better estimate the impact of interventions on learner, teacher, and school outcomes.
  • Design Comparable Incidence Rate Ratio (IRR) Effect Sizes for Count Data in Single-Case Experimental Designs is developing methods to help researchers figure out how to include single-case studies with count data in meta-analyses.
  • Methods for Investigating Causal Mechanisms in Single-Case Experimental Designs is developing methods to help researchers figure out how to meta-analyze contextual effects from studies with data on single participants.
  • Statistical Innovations for Balancing Weight Methods in Education Research is developing methods for analyzing quasi-experimental data that control for bias due to pre-intervention differences in a way that properly accounts for the tendency of students from the same school to share similarities that students from different schools do not.   
  • What, when, and for whom? Principled estimation of effect heterogeneity across multiple treatments, outcomes, and groups is developing tools to enable education researchers to better estimate how much a replication of their results is likely to differ from the original study by using Bayesian tree-based models. Bayesian tree-based models are very flexible; using them can prevent researchers from underestimating how different results will be in a replication.
  • Improving the Estimation of Site-Specific Effects and their Distribution in Multisite Trials: Practical Tools and Guidelines is developing methods for studying the statistical distribution of the effects of interventions across different sites in studies that sample from a large geographical area. This kind of analysis had only been possible using very restrictive assumptions on the data before. This project will explore how changing the assumptions affects interpretation and will identify the best alternative assumptions.
• Experimental and Interventional Design and Planning in Context Projects: These projects help education researchers plan and design better experiments.
  • Propensity Score Matching in Multilevel Educational Settings: Review of Design Considerations and Approaches is developing a practice guide that will communicate best practices in applying propensity scores when designing or analyzing quasi-experiments.
  • The Higher Education Randomized Controlled Trials (THE-RCT) – Supporting High Quality and Efficient Postsecondary RCTs and Open Science Practices is developing a set of resources to enable education researchers to plan and design high-quality randomized controlled trials, from outcome selection and statistical power analysis to templates for Institutional Review Board forms and data agreements.
• Data Tools, Computational Statistics, and Machine Learning Projects: These projects help education researchers to use novel methods from computational and data science so that they can better understand large, complex data sets, such as those gathered from online learning platforms.
  • Developing and Evaluating Tools for Communicating Statistical Evidence to Education Decision-Makers is developing and validating a novel, rigorous way to visually summarize studies for education clearinghouses by applying techniques from human-computer interaction and behavioral economics.
  • The Item Response Warehouse: Empowering data-driven psychometrics research is developing a database of education assessment data that will support development of new kinds of psychometric models, such as those that give more relevant scores by incorporating process data (for example, the order in which a student answered the test questions and the time spent on each answer).
  • Methods and Software to Classify College Courses at Scale is developing language models that will greatly increase the efficiency of institutional research projects by enabling automatic coding of course titles, numbers, and descriptions to the College Course Map, so that transcript data can be harmonized across institutions with minimal need for human coders, who require substantial training and effort to align course descriptions to a common codebook.

IES is looking forward to partnering with these project teams to advance education research, policy, and practice through the development and dissemination of innovative methods.

This blog was written by Charles Laurin (Charles.Laurin@ed.gov), NCER program officer.

IES offers internship opportunities for undergraduate and graduate students interested in learning about the research grant making process and contributing to the work of the different centers. Internships are coordinated through the U.S. Department of Education’s Student Volunteer Unpaid Internship Program and are available throughout the year.

This summer, NCER was fortunate to have Christine White join us. Christine is a doctoral student in developmental psychology at Florida State University and an IES Pre-Doctoral Fellow working with the Florida Center for Reading Research. She worked with Elizabeth Albro, NCER commissioner, and Laura Namy, NCER associate commissioner for the Teaching and Learning Division, to co-design and complete an internship focused on public access implementation. In this blog, Christine shares her experiences and insights from her summer internship opportunity.

Why I Applied for the Internship

As I approached the end of the second year in my doctoral program, I realized that a career in academia does not align well with my goals and interests. I am much more interested in evaluating, communicating, and using research to inform practice and policy than in asking novel questions and designing studies. Around this time, I also began working as part of the LDbase data repository team at Florida State, where I learned how open practices, such as preregistration, sharing data, and making scholarly publications freely accessible, can enhance the credibility, reach, and efficiency of research. I developed a strong interest in understanding the landscape of barriers and incentives influencing educational researchers in the adoption of open practices.

When I attended the American Educational Research Association conference in spring 2023, my goal was to learn about internship opportunities in organizations outside of academia. When I stopped by the IES table, I had the pleasure of meeting Dr. Elizabeth Albro. It quickly became clear that a summer internship with NCER would be a great fit. I learned that IES had recently developed a new plan to increase public access to federally funded research, and that one of their upcoming goals was to identify barriers grantees may face in complying with revised requirements for making data and publications publicly accessible at the time of publication. Thus, the timing was perfect for me to join NCER as a public access implementation intern and contribute to this initiative.

My Internship Experience

I was able to intern remotely from Tallahassee, Florida. Under the mentorship of Drs. Namy and Albro, my role was to identify anticipated challenges that grantees might face in meeting the revised requirements under the new public access plan. I met with NCER and NCSER program officers to discuss unique considerations for data sharing across different awards and project types, co-led a Virtual Office Hour session where over 70 prospective applicants and grantees shared questions and concerns about the revised requirements and expectations, and attended NCER and inter-agency meetings to learn more about the federal government’s vision for and progress towards increasing public access to research.

Through these activities, I learned about the concerns education researchers have about sharing research data and publications, such as navigating restrictive data use agreements and journal policies, selecting an appropriate online repository for sharing data, and deciding how to curate and share research data that may be at particular risk for reidentification (for example, rich video or audio data, or data collected in small or rural schools). As part of my internship, I documented these observations and began to develop ideas for resources IES could develop that may help address common concerns, such as revising existing data sharing guides to contain more detailed information about deidentifying and curating data types beyond quantitative data and creating a list of vetted data repositories of interest to educational researchers.

What I Learned from the Internship

First, through attending NCER and inter-agency meetings, I learned a great deal about the grant-making process and how government agencies operate and collaborate to support research. It was fascinating to see how NCER functions and fits within the larger systems of IES and the Department of Education.

Second, I learned about the federal government’s initiatives to increase openness and transparency in research. It was inspiring to be able to contribute during this period of active transition towards more accessible research across agencies and to hear innovative ideas for enabling and incentivizing researcher engagement in open practices from individuals with diverse backgrounds, perspectives, and expertise. I greatly appreciated that leadership at NCER and other agencies acknowledged that achieving a culture of open and accessible research is not just about introducing requirements but developing infrastructure and resources to flexibly support the people who are making it happen.

Finally, connecting with applicants and grantees gave me new insight into the challenges researchers encounter when sharing data and publications and the types of supports they need or expect from their funding agency. This knowledge has been invaluable not only for directing my activities during the internship but for informing my own research on researcher engagement in open science practices.

What is next for me?

I recently defended my preliminary exams, and I will soon begin working on my dissertation. After completing my PhD, I plan to apply to post-doctoral fellowships and positions that reflect my interest in evaluating and applying educational research in non-academic contexts and thinking “big picture” about how research can support practice, policy, and ultimately, improve the lives of teachers and students.

This blog was written by Christine White, public access implementation intern, NCER.

IES is proud to introduce the 2024-25 cohort of NCSER data science interns. These interns come to us through the U.S. State Department’s Virtual Student Federal Service Program. Under the mentorship of Sarah Brasiel, four students will support the NCSER by engaging in data mining from IES grants and related publications and creating visualizations to represent what IES has funded and learned. We asked this year’s interns to tell us about themselves, why they are interested in an internship, and a “fun fact” to share. Here’s what they said.

Aditya Daga

I am a rising sophomore at Rice University, studying computer science and statistics. Previously, I was a research intern with George Mason University, using machine learning to predict student failure based on their tendencies to procrastinate. My team was able to get our research published, and this experience got me very interested in the intersection between data science and education. When I saw the opening for the data science internship at the IES, I immediately applied because I want to continue using data science to make an impact in educational policies and practices. My career goal is to become a data scientist, and I believe this internship will provide me with necessary hands-on experience in applying data science to real-world challenges. Fun Fact: I have traveled to Dubrovnik, Croatia, where my favorite show, Game of Thrones, was filmed!

Marissa Kuehn               

I am a 4th-year undergraduate student at the University of Toledo. I am pursuing degrees in disability studies and data science. I am passionate about data and disability justice and aspire to blend analytics with advocacy. My current interests include examining the representation of people with disabilities in data practices and research and brainstorming changes to the collection and analysis of disability data that informs resource allocation, legislative changes, and more. My past work experience as a research assistant with Dr. Becca Monteleone on the Plain Truth Project, coursework in data science, lived experience of disability, and long-time passion for disability justice led me to this internship last year. I am excited to continue exploring data analysis and visualization techniques during a second internship this year because I enjoy the opportunity to apply what I’m learning in the classroom. After completion of my degrees, I hope to obtain a role in the data science field and continue my advocacy for disability justice. Fun Fact: I’m also an artist! I love making abstract watercolor paintings.

Sam Melenciuc

I am pursuing a master’s degree in information science at Pennsylvania State University. In the past, I have taken database classes that piqued my interest to continue learning more about data manipulation, analysis, and visualization. My goal for the future is to be surrounded by peers who are passionate about the work they do and encourage and challenge me to be a better worker and person all around. I truly believe this internship opportunity will open doors for me to collaborate with brilliant and talented minds where we will make an impact that matters. Fun Fact: The best view I’ve ever seen was at the top of a mountain in Madeira, Portugal.

Laura Roberts

I am a 2nd-year doctoral student at the University of Tennessee-Knoxville, focusing on special education. With 10 years of teaching experience covering mathematics in general education and special education at the secondary and elementary levels, I am excited to focus my research efforts on secondary students who struggle with math. This internship experience is a chance to broaden my knowledge of data science efforts and devote my time to the necessary and impactful work that NCSER contributes to the education field. Fun Fact: When not focusing on my studies, I enjoy spending time with my horse and dog at the farm I am fortunate to call home!

This blog was produced by Sarah Brasiel, NCSER program officer.

The U.S. Department of Education’s Institute of Education Sciences (IES) is delighted to announce the establishment of a new National Research and Development (R&D) Center on Improving Outcomes in Elementary Science Education. Both the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) and IES are equally sharing the investment, with each contributing 50% of the total investment of $15 million.

Delivery of comprehensive, multidimensional science education across K-12 is a national challenge, requiring teaching and learning approaches that emphasize a deep understanding of core science topics, cross-cutting concepts, and scientific practices to answer pertinent questions and construct important scientific explanations. There is also a critical need for the development and validation of high-quality measures of elementary science achievement. The Center for Advancing Elementary Science through Assessment, Research, and Technology (CAESART) will address these needs.

A focus on elementary science increases opportunities to develop learners’ early pathways to science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) learning and careers, particularly among populations historically underrepresented in the STEM workforce, and to develop a well-informed citizenry. 

Through partnerships among STEM researchers, leaders, and practitioners at the state, district, and school level, CAESART will generate timely evidence on how to measure elementary student science learning and evaluate the efficacy of high-quality integrated science and literacy curricula to improve student science outcomes over time. The Center’s approach will include, but is not limited to:

• a landscape analysis of existing elementary science assessments,
• the development, testing, and validation of a set of technology-based assessments that utilize adaptive and game-based structures, and
• an evaluation of the impact of an integrated science curriculum on science learning using the developed assessments. 

“This new partnership with NSF goes beyond building much-needed evidence about science assessment and learning,” said acting IES director Matthew Soldner. “It reflects our shared commitment to improving student achievement in STEM, leveraging NSF’s unique role in supporting the development of high-quality programs and products and IES’s expertise in identifying what works, for whom, and under what conditions.”

CAESART will also provide national leadership in building capacity for rigorous science assessment, sharing resources, and offering workshops and mentoring for researchers, as well as collaborating with critical stakeholders to disseminate findings. CAESART will recruit participants nationally, with concentrations in Miami, Los Angeles, and the Northeast region of the country to increase generalizability across student populations. 

This Center is supported through a cooperative agreement to provide enhanced support with IES and NSF and to advance research and national leadership on effective elementary science education.

“By partnering with IES to support CAESART, NSF’s Directorate for STEM Education (EDU) is able to not only leverage its human and financial resources but also expand its investments in critical research and assessment methods that will transform early science education at its foundation for our youngest learners, ” said NSF assistant director for STEM Education, James L. Moore III. “It will allow researchers, in collaboration with science educators and students, to develop innovative curricular, tools, and approaches that will improve science instruction while ensuring that students across the nation have access to high-quality, learning experiences. My colleagues in EDU are looking forward to seeing the immediate and long-term impact the center will have in early science education across the nation and beyond.”

This blog was written by Christina Chhin (Christina.Chhin@ed.gov), Program Officer, NCER, and Laura Namy (Laura.Namy@ed.gov), Associate Commissioner, NCER.