RESEARCH, EVALUATION AND COMMUNICATION $68,200,000

The FY 2002 Budget Request for the Research, Evaluation and Communication (REC) Subactivity is $68.20 million, a decrease of $170,000, or 0.2 percent, from the FY 2001 Current Plan of $68.37 million.

(Millions of Dollars)

Totals may not add due to rounding.
1 Not included in the FY 2001 Current Plan is $5.33 million carried forward from FY 2000.

Research on learning, teaching, and technology generates important discoveries, advancing our understanding of knowledge acquisition, instructional practice, and systemic reform. It establishes high-risk, proofs-of-concept for developing and applying learning technologies to science, mathematics, engineering and technology learning and teaching at all education levels. National and international studies, indicator development, and analyses, such as the Third International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) and the TIMSS-Repeat (TIMSS-R), provide invaluable descriptions of the status and progress made by U.S. education, as well as insights for meeting its challenges.

REC's portfolio of nearly 200 projects spans early childhood through adult learning, including preK-16 education. It is characterized by its multidisciplinary expertise in cognition, learning theory, technology, pedagogy, instructional workforce development, policy, and education system reform.

• Projects in the learning technology portfolio have continued to garner recognition as important advances; for example, all of the exemplary education technology projects in mathematics and science that the Department of Education expert panel recognized in FY 2000 received early support from NSF.

• The research on learning portfolio is yielding a series of converging results suggesting that under appropriate circumstances and instruction, youngsters are capable of developing and using complex mathematical and scientific conceptualizations at significantly earlier ages than common curricula typically expect.

• International comparative research illustrates a disturbingly low level of content preparation of U.S. middle school teachers compared to teachers in other countries and suggests that high school teacher induction practices of other countries enable more productive and effective instruction in early teaching careers.

This blend of results on effective learning technology development, research on learning, and insights from international comparisons can contribute to policy discourse and decision-making in improving U.S. mathematics and science education practice.

In the FY 2002 Budget Request, Research funding declines by $170,000 to $55.56 million. Funding for the Research on Learning and Education (ROLE) program is $40.43 million. ROLE organizes existing efforts under a variety of program areas and seeks to build deeper integration of scientific disciplines into research on learning and education. Cooperatively with other NSF efforts in the biological, social, and behavioral sciences, ROLE will continue exploratory efforts in brain research and cognitive neuroscience in order to inform the design of learning environments of the future. Additionally ROLE seeks to advance the nation's ability to apply important findings in the study of learning to complex systems of educational practice.

The FY 2002 Budget Request for the Interagency Education Research Initiative (IERI) is $15.13 million, the same level as FY 2001. IERI provides a strategic, cross-agency focused approach to large-scale, methodologically rigorous studies of different education models, including basic research on teaching, learning and institutional change processes, exploratory development of new instructional approaches, materials, and implementation models whose impact can be systematically evaluated.

Support continues for a rigorous program of Evaluation that systematically assesses the impact of all major EHR programs. Evaluation activities will continue to focus on development of program indicators, standardized evaluations, and production of databases to document accountability across all NSF education and training programs. Research, studies, and evaluation activities broadly support SMET education and human resource programs across NSF, contributing to program performance.

Evaluation funding in FY 2002 remains at the FY 2001 level of $12.64 million. A continuum of accountability activities such as monitoring, databases, impact studies, and third-party program evaluations will be pursued with an orientation to the measurement, data collection, and reporting requirements necessary to support GPRA.