May 2018
AERA Member Troy Sadler
AERA Member Troy Sadler Discusses His Experience Advocating for Education Research with the 2018 AERA Hill Delegation
AERA advocates for supporting federal funding for education research, safeguarding the integrity of education research and statistics, and advancing the field of education research. As part of these efforts, AERA invites a small delegation of education researchers to come to Washington, D.C., in March each year to visit key congressional offices as the appropriations process begins.
The delegation participants are personally invited based on a combination of considerations, including having received federal funding, living in strategic congressional districts, and working on topics of particular interest to congressional leaders.
This year’s delegation included Troy Sadler, who is a professor of education and associate dean of research at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro (UNCG).
A. Prior to this experience, I had not met with congressional staffers and did not realize how many of these kinds of meetings take place throughout the House and Senate offices. Staffers hear from many stakeholder groups on a daily basis, and I was in a few meetings in which a staffer, not surprisingly, was less interested in our messaging than I would have preferred.
At the end of a full day of meetings, I had an opportunity to talk with Lakeisha Steele from Rep. Suzanne Bonamici’s office. In contrast to the situation I described above, Ms. Steele expressed genuine interest in the ideas and topics we shared. I talked about some of our work from an IES-funded project in which we are using gaming and virtual environment technologies to teach science, and she discussed ways in which innovation in education aligned with Rep. Bonamici’s priorities. I felt that this meeting had the greatest likelihood of making an impact.
[Editor’s note: The AERA government relations team is also happy to provide information and guidance to members making congressional visits. E-mail govrelations@aera.net.]
If we want our research to have a chance of informing policy, we have to recognize the important differences between norms and expectations in our familiar communication venues (like journals) and the kinds of conversations that we might have with policymakers. Simplifying our messages, highlighting personal connections, and being responsive to current issues and trends are strategies that may prove helpful.