Spencer Foundation Racial Equity Research Grants – Applications Open

Set up in 1971, the Spencer Foundation is a US-based funder of education research and wishes to increase opportunities for all as well as improve education in order to impact positively on people’s lives.

The Foundation’s Racial Equity Research Grants support education research projects that will contribute to understanding and disrupting racial inequality in education and work to reimagine generative possibilities to advance educational equity. The goal is to support rigorous, intellectually ambitious and technically sound research.

Studies should aim to understand and disrupt the reproduction and deepening of educational inequality. This scheme is ‘field-initiated’ ie proposal submissions are not required to be developed around a particular research topic, discipline, design, method or geographic location. It is hoped that scholars will identify the most compelling and needed areas of research. Examples include:

• Instructional challenges and innovations.
• Racial and geographic disparities and promising directions for engaging and supporting children, families and communities.
• Informal learning environments and informal educators.
• Assessment challenges and opportunities.
• Social-emotional learning and wellbeing.
• Educator and leader development, identity and wellbeing.
• Digital learning environments.
• Systems change and policy making.
• Intersections between housing, health and education.

Proposals can be at all levels and in all settings of learning, including early childhood, higher education, and in schools, families and communities. The Foundation is interested in studies that seek to understand the situated experiences of minoritised groups, including Black, Latinx, Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders (AAPI), and Indigenous communities. In the 2022 round, proposals that focus on Indigenous education and scholarship focused on issues of equity in international contexts are particularly encouraged.

Principal Investigators (PIs) and Co-PIs applying must have an earned doctorate in an academic discipline or professional field, or appropriate experience in an education research-related profession.

PIs must be affiliated with a non-profit organisation or public/governmental institution that is willing to serve as the administering organisation if the grant is awarded, such as a non-profit or public college, university, school district, research facility or other non-profit organisation (with a 501(c)(3) determination or equivalent non-profit status if the organisation is outside of the United States).

Proposals are accepted from the US and internationally.

Up to $75,000 is available for projects ranging from one to five years. Budgets must be proposed in US dollars.

Application is via a two-stage process: an Intent to Apply form followed by a full proposal. Once the Intent to Apply form has been submitted, applicants will automatically have access to the full proposal application in the Foundation’s online portal.

The Intent to Apply deadline is 14 March 2022 (12:00 CT). The full proposal deadline is 7 April 2022 (12:00 CT).