Strategic Initiatives

The Spencer Foundation has been pleased to support scholarship examining the conditions, contexts, and underlying factors and processes that affect how educational organizations use data and information for improvement in its Data Use and Educational Improvement Initiative. These grants have represented work in both K-12 and higher education, as well as a range of questions on topics from data usage patterns to the effectiveness of capacity building interventions. For summaries of major grants in the Data Use and Educational Improvement Initiative, click here.

Our experience with this broad range of studies has helped us appreciate how many important questions there are to be addressed on this topic. In an effort to develop a more focused set of findings in this area, we plan to target specific questions that can be addressed in future grant projects. To that end, we will be issuing a Request for Proposals in early 2012. The focus for that RFP will be described here at that time, and the initial round of funding for that process will be made later in the year.

For those investigators who remain interested in questions that will fall outside the scope of the RFP, we continue to welcome proposals with questions around data use and educational improvement within the larger context of organizational learning. One of our investigator-initiated Areas of Inquiry is “Organizational Learning in Schools, School Systems, and Higher Education Institutions,” and we see the use of data and information as very much a part of how organizations learn and improve. We welcome data use-related proposals under this area at any time. For more information about the “Organizational Learning” Area of Inquiry and how to apply for support, click here.