As part of a new institutional initiative, the Spencer Foundation will make several awards of up to $40,000 for research projects in Philosophy as it relates to educational policy and practice. We encourage applicants to understand educational policy and practice in broad terms, including issues that directly relate to K-12 schools and higher education institutions, but also concerning policies that influence children’s growth and development in the family and in other areas of social life including children’s upbringings, educational issues in family life and in the workplace, the educational effects of welfare policy. We also encourage diverse kinds of philosophical research ranging from the highly abstract to the highly applied. Proposals might concern any of the following topics:
- the proper content of moral education and of the rights of parents to constrain it
- the place of religion in schools
- justice and efficiency in the allocation of public funds across schools and school districts
- the content of the curriculum
- assessment of competing conceptions of equality in educational resources and outcomes
- the commercialization of schools and childhoods generally
- the obligations to students with special educational needs
- the proper content of sex education in particular and “education for living” more generally (concerning,
- eg, parenting, financial self-management, etc) and the extent to which it is right for schools to defer to
- parental preferences regarding these matters
- the moral rights of school students to privacy, to freedom of expression, to freedom of association, etc
- the rights and obligations of teachers with respect to abusive or violent children
- the distribution and content of higher education
We emphasize that this list is illustrative, and not exhaustive. Proposals are accepted at any time; there are no deadlines. The proposal will be reviewed and a funding decision will be made within four to five months from the date of submission.
The proposal submission should include the following elements:
- Proposal Cover Sheet (download from our website)
- Proposal Narrative (The proposal narrative should be no longer than 1800 words, not including the reference list.)
- Proposal Budget (download from our website)
- Curriculum Vita of the Principal Investigator(s) (each CV should be no longer than 6 pages)
For more detailed guidelines and downloadable forms for the proposal submission process, please click here.
Interested applicants should send four copies of their proposal and attachments to the mailing address below:
Spencer Foundation
Attn: IPEPP
625 North Michigan Avenue
Suite 1600
Chicago, IL 60611
If you have any questions regarding the proposal submission process, please feel free to contact Kathryn Gray, Program Administrator, at kgray@spencer.org or 312-274-6509.