The Institute for Education Sciences (IES) is the research arm of the U.S. Department of Education, responsible for sponsoring and conducting research and disseminating evidence to support education practices and policy. IES sponsors research through grant competitions run by its national centers, including the National Center for Education Research (NCER) and the National Center for Special Education Research (NCSER). In August of 2014, IES asked stakeholders to provide feedback about the focus and work of NCER and NCSER, in order to help ensure that the centers are supporting and promoting significant, meaningful research.
The American Foundation for the Blind organized a national conference call of professionals in the fields of blindness/visual impairment (BVI) and deaf-blindness (DB) to gather opinions and develop a collaborative response to IES’s request. Based on the feedback provided during the call and via email, we developed a letter which expresses the major concerns of the two fields and advocates for specific solutions. This letter was shared broadly with professionals in BVI and DB, who conveyed strong support for the themes and suggestions expressed to IES. Fifty-six professionals and sixteen non-profit organizations and university departments added their signatures to the letter before it was submitted on October 31, 2014.
We are proud of this letter and the collaborative process and look forward to a response from IES. We also believe that the contents of the letter provide valuable insight, far beyond IES, into the research priorities in BVI and DB. Some of the key messages in our letter include:
- Collaboration: Given that few BVI and DB research proposals, particularly university-based proposals, have been funded by IES in recent years, IES should collaborate with the fields and consider ways to identify and remove barriers and to improve the alignment between IES’s research goals and the urgent research needs for students with BVI and DB.
- Support: NCSER should establish targeted training and supports for low-incidence/sensory disability research. Low-incidence studies require unique research strategies, often including qualitative and/or single-subject designs. With assistance and collaboration, researchers in our fields can be better prepared to write successful proposals to address IES priorities.
- Informed review: IES should evaluate the extent to which all panel reviewers of BVI and DB proposals are aware of the unique population characteristics and research approaches associated with low-incidence and sensory disability studies. Characteristics of our student populations (such as low-incidence and high coincidence of additional disabilities) should not negatively impact researchers’ opportunities for funding.
- Diverse, changing fields: Research is urgently needed to address the diverse and changing nature of the fields of BVI and DB. The population of students with BVI and DB includes students with a range of visual acuities, including students with low vision who have specific needs related to low vision devices, literacy, technology, and social supports. We must have research to understand and improve these students' access to education. Additionally, the BVI and DB fields increasingly serve students with additional disabilities whose unique learning needs require specialized personnel, tools, and teaching methods. At the same time, braille instruction must change at the K-12 and university levels to address the national transition to Unified English Braille, and technology is reshaping inclusive classrooms. Our students must have evidence-based tools and techniques to be able to keep pace with their peers. All of these are immediate needs, justifying a targeted funding program for the fields of BVI and DB.
- Longitudinal research: Longitudinal research is needed to help our fields understand the longer-term student outcomes with respect to technology, science technology engineering and math (STEM) education, service delivery models, personnel preparation, and interventions.
Please continue to AFB’s Public Policy Center site to read the entire letter to IES and/or to download a printable, PDF version of the letter. If you have any questions about the letter, please contact Rebecca Sheffield, AFB’s Senior Policy Researcher, at rsheffield@afb.net.
