Reform what?  The paradoxical and difficult first step in starting a conversation about education reform has been to get people to understand that there is a "system" at work in the American education system.  Identifying the parts, players, and problems within this system remains a steep challenge.  Even those with the best of intentions have had trouble talking about, let alone instituting, effective education reform.  FrameWorks research shows that commonly used, but problematic frames, like "the achievement gap" and "global competitiveness" allow the public to default to ways of thinking that do not promote support for reform.

As part of our work, FrameWorks Institute, with funding from the Nellie Mae Education Foundation, has developed a new tool kit on education that puts all of our research and communications recommendations to date in one place, including reports from each phase of the research investigation, a message memo that summarizes and synthesizes the research findings, as well as sample letters to the editor, frequently asked questions, talking points and other  tools to help experts and advocates apply the findings on the ground.We have also just completed production of a highly visual, stand-alone e-Workshop on how to talk about American education. The e-Workshop is ideal for sharing with wider networks of experts and advocates who may not have access to FrameWorks trainings and technical assistance.  Apply for a password and get an instant reply that provides access to all FrameWorks videos and toolkits.

The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation has funded FrameWorks to conduct research to ensure that the innovations it funds in digital learning and the emerging field of which these innovations are part can be effectively communicated by the practitioner community to voters, policymakers, parents, business leaders and educators.  Having made a substantial investment in studying the field and exploring the implications of this work for the future of American education, the Foundation is concerned that the vision that its grantees embrace is not easily shared with the broader public.  Key questions for exploration include: 

·      How do most Americans think about the process of education and how can digital media best be explained within and beyond this context?

·      What habits of explanation are being applied regularly to digital learning, with what consequences?  How are these habits reinforced or contested in popular media and expert (grantee) communications?

·      What missing pieces of information hold the most promise for connecting new ways of learning to the values and goals most Americans hold for education in the US?

Two new Study Circles -- six-month long intensive learning opportunities for front-line communicators -- kicked off this fall.  In Massachusetts, the United Way of Massachusetts Bay, in partnership with the Massachusetts Department of Early Education and Care, will bring together senior leaders from the non-profit and government sectors in the Commonwealth to study FrameWorks' research on early child development.  With FrameWorks' help, they will also begin developing a statewide campaign to build public will for policies and programs that support healthy child development in Massachusetts.

In Alberta, Canada, professionals from a variety of NGOs and government will reconsider ways to talk about early education, early child development and child mental health.  Drawing upon a parallel research inquiry in which FrameWorks studied the attitudes of Albertans to early child policies, these experts will consider how to translate these findings for provincial leaders, practitioners and policymakers.

New to our full time staff is cultural anthropologist Eric Lindland.  Before joining FrameWorks' DC office, Eric taught anthropology at Emory University, Loyola University Chicago, and the University of Notre Dame.  He has also worked as a high school teacher and administrator in Guatemala.  As a cognitive anthropologist, his research has focused on how analogies are used in language, symbolism, and ethics to bridge meanings between differing cultural systems. In particular, he has engaged cultural modeling theory to explore the intersection of African and Western religious and medical systems. Eric received his Ph.D. in Anthropology from Emory University.

Peer Discourse Analysis is a research method, adapted from the disciplines of cognitive anthropology, linguistics and political sociology, that enables FrameWorks researchers to see how people think about an issue when they are assembled in a small group setting.  This method builds on and extends what we have learned in one-on-one cultural models interviews and media content analyses on a given issue. Peer Discourse sessions verify the findings from these earlier phases of the research and also enable researchers to experiment with promising alternative frames, and to observe the negotiations between members of the public in a dynamic social environment. 

An intermediary step between the descriptive and prescriptive parts of a research investigation, Peer Discourse sessions are divided into three parts.  In the first part, a group of "engaged citizens" are given a concept, like education, and asked to write down words and ideas that they associate with the concept.  After brainstorming, the participants are often given several media samples, written to include a specific set of frame elements, such as values, messenger, and tone.  In the final step, our informants are given some room to play with the concepts they've been presented with.  In our recent research on budgets and taxes, for example, participants were asked to create their own national budget plan.

As participants negotiate their priorities and argue them in informal settings, FrameWorks is able to see "what eats what" or how dominant frames in discourse trump many of the reframes we've introduced.  When we get lucky, a new frame goes viral and people are able to argue for systemic policies using what appears to them as a new idea.  This, in turn, suggests to FrameWorks researchers what reframes hold promise for our next round of investigation: experimental surveys with large national samples.  In this way, Peer Discourse Sessions offer a kind of winnowing process.

FrameWorkers have had a busy summer and fall speaking to groups of experts and advocates across the country, and our dance card looks full in the month ahead as well.  Here are a few highlights:

In June, Susan Nall Bales and Nat Kendall-Taylor shared FrameWorks' research on Americans' understandings of child mental health with the Yale Child Studies Center. Nat presented a comparison of US and Albertan understandings at the Canadian Psychiatric Association's Annual Meeting in Toronto in September.

In July, Lynn Davey shared our latest work on budgets and taxes, funded by the MacArthur Foundation, with the Tax Fairness Organizing Collaborative in Washington, DC, and again in September at a special workshop convened by Kansas Action for Children.

In August, Jane Feinberg shared FrameWorks' new research on education and education reform at "Innovate to Educate:  A Symposium on [Re]Design for Personalized Learning."  The national symposium was co-sponsored by the Software & Information Industry Association, the Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development, and the Council of Chief State School Officers.

In September, the Nellie Mae Education Foundation hosted two webinars for the broader philanthropic community on FrameWorks' education research.  Susan Bales and Jane Feinberg presented to the Hewlett Foundation's Deeper Learning Proof Point Network and to a group of Grantmakers For Education funders interested in educational innovation.