Vision Grants

Overview

The Spencer Foundation invests in research to improve education, broadly conceived. We have identified a critical need for innovative, methodologically and disciplinarily diverse, large-scale research projects to transform education systems for equity. Importantly, we believe that ambitious research must begin with the challenges, problems, and opportunities in education systems. To stimulate research that addresses this need, the Spencer Foundation is investing in a new program designed to provide scholars with the time, space, resources, and support to plan a large-scale study or program of research: geared toward real-world impact on equity; based on research across disciplines and methods; reliant on meaningful collaboration with practitioners, policymakers, and communities; and focused on transforming educational systems. 

Toward this end, the Vision Grants program funds the collaborative planning of innovative, methodologically diverse, interdisciplinary research on education that contributes to transforming education systems for equity. Vision Grants are research planning grants to bring together a team, for 6 to 12 months, to collaboratively develop ambitious, large-scale research projects focused on transforming educational systems toward greater equity. This program takes as core that visionary, interdisciplinary, and collaborative research projects require time, space, and thoughtfulness to incubate and plan. Vision Grants are $75,000 total and two cycles of this grant program will be held annually. Different from many of our other programs, the proposal does not yet need to be a fully fleshed out research plan. Proposals are identifying a research topic, scope for impact, process and a team that will lead to a fully fleshed out research plan by the end of the grant period.

While the Vision Grant program stands on its own to spark research ideas and collaborations, being awarded a Vision Grant is also a prerequisite for applying to our Transformative Research Grant program (TRG, $3.5 million), which are designed for large-scale research projects that transform education systems for equity.

Vision Grants will provide planning funds for teams to develop proposals for research projects that: 

• Are focused on key challenges and opportunities that have the potential for increasing equity in education
• Engage across disciplines and/or research methods
• Collaborate with practitioners, policymakers, and communities (and other stakeholders)
• Have clear sightlines to transformational change through research at a systemic level

The Vision Grants allow teams to join together and generate ideas for collaborative scholarship that develops a new vision of what equitable educational systems can look like, consider which disciplines have taken up these issues previously (and why they have fallen short or encountered limitations), and foreground important ideas that will allow new and ambitious research to emerge. For example, Vision Grants might lead to research projects that:

• Develop a new policy, pedagogical approach, practice, or intervention, e.g., at the K-12 or post-secondary level, that has the potential to have a transformative and systemic impact and explore the feasibility of implementing it at the state or local level, or within a system.
• Build upon approaches or policies that have worked well in one setting, with the goal of studying them in a range of settings to better understand how, where, and with whom they work and why.
• Work in partnership with youth at the city, state or federal level to reimagine the choices young people have to learn beyond school.
• Work with communities to co-design approaches that improve educational equity by working across sectors (e.g., education and health, housing, criminal justice).
• Connect scholars with legal teams to impact litigation strategies in local, state, or federal contexts of educational inequity.
• Rethink effective approaches to teacher and educational leader preparation, learning, and development, and partner with systems of teacher and leader preparation and/or accreditation to enact changes that would increase the diversity and robustness of the educator and leader pathways.

These are just examples. We welcome proposals that consider creative ways to understand and solve complex problems with the goal of reimagining and transforming education systems for equity. 

• Proposals to the Vision Grant program must be for developing research projects that study education and/or learning, broadly conceived, though they can include other sectors in addition to education.
• Principal Investigators (PIs) and Co-PIs applying for a Vision Grant must have appropriate experience or an earned doctorate in an academic discipline or terminal degree in a professional field. While graduate students may be part of the research team, they may not be named the PI or Co-PI on the proposal.

Applications Open
December 8, 2023

Intent to Apply Form Deadline
February 7, 2024, 12:00 PM, noon, Central time

Full Proposal Deadline
March 7, 2024, 12:00 PM, noon, Central time

PIs and Co-PIs may apply for a Vision Grant if they have another active research grant from the Spencer Foundation or if they have another Spencer grant proposal in review.

All awarded Vision Grantees will have the option to apply for a Transformative Research Grant, with awards to carry out the planned research project (budgets up to $3.5M).