Organizational Problem Solving and the Use of Research in Education Policy

本项目探讨组织如何使用推拉过程来影响美国教育政策研究的提供和使用。组织的拉动效应决定了政策问题研究的普遍性和类型。负责解决教育问题的组织在征求研究以供决策过程使用的倾向上各不相同。组织也表现出对研究证据使用的推动效应，吸收供应，并将其推动到最终的监管政策中。官僚机构和利益集团一起综合研究证据，并利用它来制定最终的监管政策。在这样做的过程中，组织过滤了用于制定公共政策的研究。该项目将加强对群体如何提出旨在影响公共政策的论点，以及哪些群体更有可能利用研究来支持他们的论点的基本理解。该项目将提供利益集团和教育问题概况，以供研究人员在制定教育管理建议时使用。这项研究将产生一些见解，这些见解随后可以为希望在教育和其他问题上形成监管政策决策的组织和公民所使用的策略提供信息。该项目将通过培养处理数据、分析、陈述和研究交流的技能，对研究生和本科生在社会研究过程中的学生培训作出重大贡献。因此，该项目与大学校园内从事技能发展的更大举措一致。最后，该项目将为希望影响教育政策的利益集团、政策制定者和公民提供见解，并为影响监管改革提案提供一般经验教训。该项目进行理论辩论，讨论组织如何将注意力引导到各种问题上，特别关注他们如何使用研究证据来引导注意力。教育监管政策的制定代表了组织重要性的一个闪点，特别是考虑到它们在教育监管的两个主要文献中明显缺席。首先是对规则制定过程的研究。这些文献主要关注利益集团在制定监管议程方面的作用，而忽略了像USED这样的官僚机构如何塑造监管议程和其他参与者的议程。第二种文献是关于教育政策的，其注意力不成比例地集中在立法和教育成果上，几乎忽略了监管改革作为政策变化的重要来源。本项目重点关注美国联邦政府制定规则的制度化、结构化和透明过程。这个过程与几乎所有其他的联邦政策制定模式都是独特的，因为有一个政策提案，然后是公众评论的机会，然后是修订后的监管政策的发布。这一过程使我们能够评估USED组织在多大程度上塑造了来自其他参与者的研究证据的供应，并反过来检查他们如何将研究证据纳入最终的监管政策。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

This project addresses how organizations use a push and pull process to influence the provision and use of research in education policy in the United States. The pull effects of organizations shape the prevalence and types of research available across policy issues. Organizations tasked with problem solving in education vary in their propensity to solicit research for use in the policy-making process. Organizations also exhibit push effects on the use of research evidence, taking in the supply, and pushing this into resultant regulatory policies. Together, bureaucracies and interest groups synthesize research evidence and use it to shape resulting regulatory policies. In doing so, organizations filter the research used in crafting public policies. The project will enhance the basic understanding of how groups make arguments aimed at influencing public policy, and which groups are more likely to use research to bolster their arguments. The project will provide interest group and education issue profiles for the use of research in developing regulatory proposals in education. The study will generate insights that can subsequently inform strategies used by organizations and citizens hoping to shape regulatory policy decisions in education and other issues. The project will contribute significantly to student training in the process of social research at both the graduate and undergraduate levels by developing skills in working with data, analysis, presentation, and communication of research. The project is therefore in line with larger initiatives across university campuses to engage in skills development. Finally, the project will generate insights for interest groups, policymakers, and citizens hoping to influence education policy, and general lessons for impacting regulatory reform proposals.The project engages theoretical debates addressing how organizations channel attention to various issues, with a particular focus on how they use research evidence to channel that attention. Regulatory policy-making in education represents a flash-point for the importance of organizations, particularly given their conspicuous absence in two major strands of literature that converge in education regulations. The first is the study of the rule-making process. This literature largely focuses on the role of interest groups in shaping regulatory agendas, ignoring how bureaucracies, like USED, shape both regulatory agendas and the agendas of other actors. The second strand of literature is in education policy, where attention is disproportionately focused on legislation and educational outcomes, all but ignoring regulatory reform as a significant source of policy change. This project focuses on the institutionalized, structured, and transparent process of federal rule-making at USED. This process is unique from nearly all other modes of federal policy-making in that there is a policy proposal, followed by the opportunity for public commenting, then followed by the issuance of a revised regulatory policy. This process allows us to assess the extent to which organizations within USED shape the supply of research evidence from other actors, and in turn, examine how they incorporate research evidence into resultant regulatory policies.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.