David Kaplan, Professor, Educational Psychology, UW-Madison
 
Title: Methods for Estimating the Pace of Progress to the United Nations Education Sustainable Development Targets 
 
Abstract: In 2015, the United Nations adopted the Sustainable Development Goals. Regarding education, the UN identified as a key goal equitable, high-quality education, including the achievement of literacy and numeracy for all youth and adults. To assess country-level progress toward these goals, it is important to monitor trends in educational outcomes over time. The purpose of this talk is to demonstrate how optimally predictive growth models can be constructed to monitor the pace of progress at which countries are progressing toward the education sustainable development goals. Numerous models for the pace of progress can be specified, however, choosing one model and using it for predictive purposes assumes that the chosen model is the one that generated the data, and this choice runs the risk of over-confident inferences and potentially risky policy decisions. To address this problem, we adapt and apply Bayesian stacking to form mixtures of predictive distributions from an ensemble of models specified to predict country-level pace of progress. We demonstrate Bayesian stacking using country-level data from the PISA. Using common forms of forecast evaluation, our results show that Bayesian stacking yields better predictive accuracy than any single ensemble member model.

Jessica Rodrigues, Assistant Professor, Special Education, University of Missouri
 

Title: Knowledge Mobilization: Communicating Your Research for Impact
 
Abstract: We want our research to be impactful, yet we do not often receive targeted training about how to effectively communicate our research via various outlets for reaching our intended audience. In this presentation, Dr. Jessica Rodrigues shares principles for impactful research communication and knowledge mobilization strategies for sharing education research with wide audiences. She discusses two of her ongoing NSF-funded projects for which she is designing, refining, and assessing key abstracts—a novel knowledge mobilization strategy—for sharing research with teachers in particular.