University of Pennsylvania Predoctoral Interdisciplinary Training Program in Education Sciences

The University of Pennsylvania established the Predoctoral Training Program in Interdisciplinary Methods for Field-based Research in Education in 2005 as a collaborative initiative among the Graduate School of Education, School of Arts and Sciences, and the Wharton School, as well as two affiliated policy and research centers: the Consortium for Policy Research and Evaluation and the Penn Center for Education Leadership. With the 2009 grant, the program continued to prepare fellows to design and carry out rigorous field-based research to advance and inform education policy on questions of the impacts and cost effectiveness of various educational policy and leadership practices. The fellows were to build a strong foundation in an academic discipline (such as economics, sociology, psychology) as well as in education. Fellows came from multiple disciplinary backgrounds and participated in a coordinated set of instruction and field-based research experiences to prepare them in the science and practice of rigorous research in education. In addition to being prepared to conduct randomized controlled trials, fellows also mastered the skills to apply observational and qualitative research to advance theory, inform study designs, and enrich the utility of impact evaluations. There were seven major instructional and research experiences in the program: (1) core coursework in educational foundations, academic disciplines, and research methods; (2) collaborative field-based research in educational settings; (3) weekly workshops focused on methods for studying education policy and leadership; (4) special hands-on training in data collection design and administration, data analysis, and communications and dissemination; (5) participation in research professional meetings and conferences; (6) teaching apprenticeships; and (7) quarterly fellow-mentor seminars.