Dr. Niesz was awarded a research grant from the Spencer Foundation to investigate how education activists produce and circulate knowledge in their struggles for education change and education justice. The last decade has seen an unprecedented wave of educator organizing and activism. Proliferating research on educator activism documents educators’ strong critiques of trends in the contemporary education policy context that negatively impact their schools and profession. It also documents their action for change. Yet, researchers have yet to provide an explicit, nuanced analysis of how education activists generate the knowledge that informs their activism. We know even less about how such activist knowledge travels beyond the group, into spheres of power and influence.
To address these gaps, Dr. Niesz is conducting an ethnographic comparative case study to explore how knowledge is generated through Ohio education activists’ advocacy for state education policy change. Through interviews with activists, the collection and analysis of social media, and participation in campaigns for education justice, she is investigating how and what knowledge is produced to guide activism, as well as how, where, and to what effect this knowledge circulates within and beyond Ohio’s education advocacy networks.
In these times when education policymakers appear more responsive to elite powerholders in government and industry than to the accumulated knowledge of the profession, understanding the production, circulation, and impact of education activists’ knowledge has implications for the future of public education. These understandings may help promote particularly effective forms of civic and policy engagement among educators and their allies, and, ultimately, professional knowledge-driven improvement of U.S. public schooling.