Educators and Researchers Working Together to Improve Teaching Practices

(NAPSI)—A great education can have a transformational impact on a student’s life. And every student—not just a lucky few—deserves to get an education that enables them to reach their full potential. Thanks to decades of research, we know more than ever before how children learn and develop. Unfortunately, educational research is slow to inform instructional practice in our schools and classrooms, and the ideas of experienced educators rarely attract the attention needed to be validated by scientific research.

One way to bridge the gap is by ensuring educators have access to the latest in research and tools to support every aspect of students’ development. To that end, the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative (CZI) announced $5.45 million in grants focused on bridging the gap between research and practice in education to nine teams, which include educators, support organizations, and researchers to support the advancement of classroom practices that are already demonstrating the potential to improve student outcomes.

“We see the closer partnership between researchers and educators in the classroom—directly leveraging science to improve classroom practice—as a new way to tackle age-old challenges for teachers such as student engagement, literacy or self-regulation. These grants stem from the knowledge that building tighter, bi-directional connections between research and educators can accelerate impact,” said Brooke Stafford-Brizard, director of whole child development at CZI.

These grants reflect CZI’s commitment to working with educators and researchers to take an evidence-based, “whole child” approach to learning—in short, expanding the definition of student success beyond academics to include their identity, physical, mental, cognitive, social and emotional development. This approach is grounded in the sciences—including educational psychology, cognitive neuroscience, public health, and social psychology—that inform how humans learn and develop within and beyond the classroom.

Click here to learn more about CZI’s work in education.

““We see a closer partnership between researchers and educators in the classroom as a way to tackle challenges for teachers,” via Brooke Stafford-Brizard @ChanZuckerberg.http://bit.ly/2wMByMF”