Opinion
School & District Management Opinion

Public Scholarship Is About More Than Edu-Celebrity

By Janelle Scott — January 15, 2019 3 min read
  • Save to favorites
  • Print

Critics complain that education research is jargon-heavy and inaccessible, slow to produce, and inconclusive. To be clear, education researchers do not produce research expecting that it will be ignored or languish behind journal pay walls. They want their scholarship to matter for policy and practice. And for it to matter, the research must reach the public.

The best advice I have received on public scholarship was from Vivian Tseng, a senior vice president at the William T. Grant Foundation. And it was this: There are multiple publics. These include other researchers, students, parents, community members, teachers, principals, district leaders, policymakers, foundations, think tanks, journalists, bloggers, social-media influencers, and advocacy groups.

About This Section

BRIC ARCHIVE

Education Week Commentary teamed up with Frederick M. Hess to ask four accomplished scholars a simple question: What’s the best advice you’ve ever gotten on how to be a public scholar?

Read the full package, along with original analysis of this year’s new Edu-Scholar data by the Education Week Research Center.

Experienced researchers understand the importance of power, relationship building, and the desire from policymakers and advocates for multiple forms of reliable evidence. Many researchers are adept at translating nuanced theory and empirical study in ways that speak to the interests of a variety of audiences. We write books and journal articles, use social media, appear on podcasts and videos, and publish in open-access journals. Those of us who work this way do so to communicate our findings and debate their relevance, significance, and applicability. But this path is not for all scholars.

Others are reticent about expanding the outlets in which they share their scholarship, or they have limited capacity to do so. Female professors and professors of color—and female faculty of color, in particular—are unfairly expected to provide heavy service to their departments, universities, and professional associations even as they teach, conduct research, and mentor students. It can be challenging to add “publicly engaged scholarship” to this work. While norms are shifting to be more inclusive of public scholarship, tenure and promotion systems still consider academic publishing to be the gold standard. In addition, universities have been inconsistent in upholding academic freedom when scholarship is controversial and raises public ire.

Public engagement can also place researchers at a profound risk."

Public engagement can also place researchers at a profound risk. Researchers interested in redressing education inequality necessarily do work that is provocative, that challenges systems of power or long-held theories or beliefs, or contradicts existing empirical scholarship. Such work can make scholars targets for abuse. Black, Latinx, Indigenous, Asian-American, LGBTQ, and female scholars have been targeted with racist and sexist harassment, and/or threats to their jobs as a result of their public engagement.

Researchers also worry that their findings will be distorted or misused and often need time to develop a public voice and to establish credibility in their fields. Scholars not yet ready for the visibility need not shy away from engaging locally or informally.

Outward, public-facing engagement is important, and researchers should take the time and avail themselves of resources to develop their public voices. Yet if researchers primarily look in formal public policy spaces or on social media platforms for ways to engage, they miss important local and informal possibilities for publicly engaged scholarship that matters just as much.

If one is not careful and deliberate, the pursuit of edu-celebrity status can lead some researchers to neglect the time and care it takes for critical relationship building, the production of rigorous and relevant scholarship, and the development of multiple ways of communicating findings that are essential for informing policy, research, and practice.

Related Tags:

A version of this article appeared in the January 16, 2019 edition of Education Week as Public Scholarship Is About More Than Edu-Celebrity

Events

Ed-Tech Policy Webinar Artificial Intelligence in Practice: Building a Roadmap for AI Use in Schools
AI in education: game-changer or classroom chaos? Join our webinar & learn how to navigate this evolving tech responsibly.
Education Webinar Developing and Executing Impactful Research Campaigns to Fuel Your Ed Marketing Strategy 
Develop impactful research campaigns to fuel your marketing. Join the EdWeek Research Center for a webinar with actionable take-aways for companies who sell to K-12 districts.
This content is provided by our sponsor. It is not written by and does not necessarily reflect the views of Education Week's editorial staff.
Sponsor
Privacy & Security Webinar
Navigating Cybersecurity: Securing District Documents and Data
Learn how K-12 districts are addressing the challenges of maintaining a secure tech environment, managing documents and data, automating critical processes, and doing it all with limited resources.
Content provided by Softdocs

EdWeek Top School Jobs

Teacher Jobs
Search over ten thousand teaching jobs nationwide — elementary, middle, high school and more.
View Jobs
Principal Jobs
Find hundreds of jobs for principals, assistant principals, and other school leadership roles.
View Jobs
Administrator Jobs
Over a thousand district-level jobs: superintendents, directors, more.
View Jobs
Support Staff Jobs
Search thousands of jobs, from paraprofessionals to counselors and more.
View Jobs

Read Next

School & District Management The Eclipse Is Great for Learning. But It's Tough on School Logistics
A total solar eclipse will cross a large swath of the country on April 8, sparking tough management choices for leaders of the districts in its path.
5 min read
A woman and stands outside with her arm on the back of a boy as they look up at the sky while wearing special paper glasses made for viewing a solar eclipse.
Jackie Johnson and her son Bradley Johnson, 9, watch a partial solar eclipse at the Frost Science Museum on Oct. 14, 2023, in downtown Miami. In 2024, some districts are planning to delay or cancel school on the day of a total eclipse, out of safety concerns.
Matias J. Ocner/Miami Herald via AP
School & District Management Opinion A Good Principal Knows When It's Time to Leave
I didn’t leave my job because of burnout; I stepped away from being a school leader because it was in everybody’s best interest.
Matthew Ebert
4 min read
Conceptual illustration of someone handing off a baton to someone else over a completed puzzle.
Vanessa Solis/Education Week via Canva
School & District Management Principals Tell Politicians on Capitol Hill: We’re Burning Out
Students' mental health top principals' growing list of concerns.
6 min read
People walk outside the U.S Capitol building in Washington, June 9, 2022.
Visitors walk outside the U.S Capitol building in Washington on June 9, 2022.
Patrick Semansky/AP
School & District Management Women Superintendents Experience Bias on the Climb to Leadership
Interpersonal slights and inequities make it hard for women to land the job and stay in it.
3 min read
Woman stands in front of a staircase in different colors. She is about to walk up the stairs. Concept of standing in front of a challenge and finding the right solution and courage to move on.
mikkelwilliam/E+