Proposals for Education Research Grants

Founded in 1971, the Spencer Foundation is the only national foundation focused exclusively on supporting education research.

The foundation invites applications for its Large Research Grants on Education program, which will award grants of $125,000 to $500,000 over one to five years to support education research projects with the potential to contribute to the improvement of education, broadly conceived. 

The foundation supports rigorous, intellectually ambitious, and technically sound research that is relevant to the most pressing questions and compelling opportunities in education; it also seeks to support scholarship that develops new foundational knowledge that may have a lasting impact on educational discourse. The program supports proposals from multiple disciplinary and methodological perspectives, both domestically and internationally, from scholars at various stages in their careers. 

The program is “field-initiated” in that proposal submissions are not in response to a specific request for a particular research topic, discipline, design, method, or location. The foundation anticipates that proposals will span a wide range of topics and disciplines and innovatively address questions central to education, including education, anthropology, philosophy, psychology, sociology, law, economics, history, and neuroscience.

The foundation welcomes methodological diversity in answering pressing questions and is open to projects that use a wide array of research methods, including quantitative, qualitative, mixed-methods, ethnographies, design-based research, participatory methods, and historical research. The foundation also is open to projects that incorporate data from multiple and varied sources, span a sufficient length of time as to achieve a depth of understanding, or work closely with practitioners or community members over the life of the project. In addition, the foundation welcomes proposals submitted by multidisciplinary and multigenerational teams that are positioned to both contribute to the project as well as contribute to the teaching and learning of fellow team members.

An intent to apply is due May 22, 2024, at 12 noon CT, and upon review, selected applicants will be invited to submit a full proposal, due June 18, 2024, at 12 noon CT.

To be eligible, principal investigators (PIs) 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 must be affiliated with a nonprofit organization or public/governmental institution that is willing to serve as the administering organization. 

Restrictions: PIs and Co-PIs may only hold one active research grant from the Spencer Foundation at a time. PIs and Co-PIs may not submit more than one research proposal to the Spencer Foundation at a time. This restriction applies to the Small Grants Program, Large Grants Program, Racial Equity Research Grants Program, and Research-Practice Partnership Program. If the PI or any of the Co-PIs currently have a research proposal under consideration in any of these programs, they are required to wait until a final decision has been made on the pending proposal before they can submit a new proposal.

For complete program guidelines and application instructions, see the Spencer Foundation website.