The Spencer Foundation, the only national foundation focused exclusively on supporting education research, is accepting applications to its Conference Grant Program, which provides support to scholars for small research conferences and focused symposia.

The program seeks to bring together researchers, practitioners, and other important collaborators whose substantive knowledge, theoretical insight, and methodological expertise can be assembled in ways that build on and advance education research. Convenings can serve as starting points for building new research agendas or as touchstones for research communities to connect and advance their shared scholarly interests about education research.

The three areas of focus for this funding period include:

Developing High-Quality Educators and Leaders — Research that addresses key education issues, from the training of the pre-K educator to the development of university and college leadership pipelines.

Exploring Human Learning and Thriving — Research to advance conceptualizations of strength- and resiliency-based perspectives of whole-person pedagogies that value and partner with communities and families as central to learning.

Innovative Research Methods — Research to strengthen the quality of the data and evidence of research training in education research.

The program is limited to conference budgets of no more than $50,000.

To be eligible, principal investigators and co-PIs must have an earned doctorate in an academic discipline or professional field or have obtained appropriate experience in an education research-related profession. Applicants also must be affiliated with a college, university, school district, nonprofit research facility, or nonprofit cultural institution.

See the Spencer Foundation website for complete program guidelines and application instructions.