Proposed National Center for Research on Educator Diversity - University of Houston
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Proposed National Center for Research on Educator Diversity

Conra Gist, associate professor of teaching and teacher education at the University of Houston College of Education, received a University of Houston Division of Research National Centers planning grant in 2020 to support the formation of a National Center for Research on Educator Diversity (NCRED). NCRED would serve as a research hub committed to dismantling inequity in teacher development systems through supporting the academic and professional advancement of ethnoracially, culturally and linguistically diverse educators. The aims of the proposed center are as follows:

  1. Establish the knowledge base: NCRED will serve as the institutional home for the generation of knowledge grounded in evidence-based outcomes, and for subsequent educator diversity knowledge projects that will be published.
  2. Disseminate the knowledge base: NCRED will facilitate the dissemination of research and practitioner scholarship across a wide range of researchers, scholars and practitioners.
  3. Apply the knowledge base: NCRED will serve as an organizing hub for innovative research practice partnerships (RPPs) committed to educator diversity that will be launched in other regions in the United States.

NCRED will be informed and guided by research from the “Handbook of Research on Teachers of Color and Indigenous Teachers,” a knowledge project that involved the collaboration of over 60 researchers from a diverse set of universities across the nation. The handbook will set forth research and policy directives to address knowledge gaps related to recruiting, preparing, supporting and retaining Teachers of Color and Indigenous Teachers in K – 12 schools across 11 core domains of inquiry:

  1. Recruitment (Goings & Bianco, 2016)
  2. Program design (Flores, Claeys, & Gist, 2018)
  3. Professional development (Kohli, Picower, Martinez, & Ortiz, 2015)
  4. Retention (Carver-Thomas, & Darling-Hammond, 2017)
  5. Pedagogical and leadership practices (Lynn, 2006)
  6. Mentorship (Bristol, 2015)
  7. Human resource development (Gist, 2018)
  8. Intersectionalities (Brockenbrough, 2012)
  9. Educational impact (Easton-Brooks, 2014)
  10. Policy (Putman, Hansen, Walsh, & Quintero, 2016)
  11. Minority-serving institutions (Petchauer & Mawhinney, 2017)

NCRED Initiation Team

  • Margarita Bianco, University of Colorado, Denver
  • Travis Bristol, University of California, Berkeley
  • Donald Easton-Brooks, University of Nevada, Reno
  • Amaya Garcia, New America
  • Conra Gist, University of Houston
  • Michael Hansen, Brookings Institution
  • Maria Hyler, Learning Policy Institute
  • Marvin Lynn, Portland State University
  • Rita Kohli, University of California, Riverside
  • Ke Wu, Carnegie Foundation