Interagency Education Research Initiative (IERI)

The Interagency Education Research Initiative (IERI) is a collaborative effort jointly sponsored by the National Science Foundation, the Institute of Education Sciences in the U.S. Department of Education (see http://www.ed.gov/programs/edresearch/applicant.html), and the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development in the National Institutes of Health (see http://www.nichd.nih.gov/funding/funding-opps.htm). In FY 2004 the IERI grant competition will be managed separately by each agency. The National Science Foundation invites proposals for research projects that will investigate the effectiveness of interventions designed to improve student learning and achievement in preK-12 science and/or preK-12 mathematics with an emphasis on middle and high school. Technology should be a part of the intervention or used in an essential manner in the analysis of the intervention.

The goal of the Interagency Education Research Initiative for NSF is to support scientific research that investigates the effectiveness of educational interventions (defined as educational practices, strategies, curricula, or programs) in preK-12 science and/or mathematics as they are implemented in varied school and home settings with diverse student populations. From an empirical perspective, the aim of IERI is to identify the conditions under which effective, evidence-based interventions to improve preK-12 student learning and achievement succeed when applied on a large scale. This necessarily requires a multidisciplinary approach; the participation of a variety of experts including science, mathematics, and engineering faculty along with education researchers is encouraged.  In addition, successful projects will include a variety of partners such as states, universities, schools, teachers, and parents and will also require the use of technology for the scaling or the study of the intervention. NSF especially encourages proposals focusing on middle and high school mathematics and/or science.

IERI will fund two types of projects -- contextual projects and scaling projects.

• Contextual projects are smaller projects that aim to develop components of a potential scaling project. Examples include feasibility studies, instrument development, and replication studies. Contextual projects can be funded for up to 5 years for up to a total of $2,000,000. 
• Scaling projects are larger projects that aim to demonstrate that an intervention can scale in either size of affected population or in the variety of contexts in which the intervention is successful. Scaling projects can be funded for up to 5 years for up to a total of $6,000,000. Scaling projects must have a strong evidentiary base and demonstrate, through rigorous, well-controlled, large-scale empirical studies, which proposed education approaches are in fact most effective in practice. The interventions may be school-based or based outside of school and should use technology either in the intervention or in its analysis.

 Agency Representative

• Finbarr (Barry) Sloane, National Science Foundation, Rm 855, telephone: 703-292-5146, email: fsloane@nsf.gov.