The Agenda Discourse: A Framework for Understanding the Federal Role in Improving Education Research

• In Event: 72.038 - Framing Educational Discourse in Contested Political Terrains

Abstract

As Congress considers the Strengthening Education through Research Act, a bill that would reauthorize the Education Sciences Reform Act and the Institute of Education Sciences, this discourse analysis examines the current debate about how to improve educational research. Extending a framework devised by Cochran-Smith & Fries (2001), this article analyzes legislation, public reports, and speeches to unpack how the agendas for educational research are influencing text and talk in the nation’s capital. We find that federal discourse around improving education research is organized around four warrants: the evidentiary warrant, the political warrant, the accountability warrant, and the efficiency warrant. We argue that federal actors employ these warrants to support or resist research practices proposed by experimentalists and continuous improvement advocates.

Authors

• Allison Rose Socol, University of North Carolina - Chapel Hill

• Lora A. Cohen-Vogel, University of North Carolina - Chapel Hill

• Qi Xing, University of North Carolina - Chapel Hill

• Torrie Kincaid Edwards, University of North Carolina - Chapel Hill