February 2013

In January, the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST) released the report Designing a Digital Future: Federally Funded Research and Development in Networking and Information Technology. The report finds that, despite areas of progress, “[e]fforts in educational technology, energy and transportation, and interagency collaboration still appear to be lacking, and R&D levels remain inadequate.” Eight recommendations are presented for priority consideration in this Congressionally mandated report; one speaks centrally to R&D investment in education research. The report compares R&D support in 2012 and 2010 and reaches the following conclusion: 

“The 2010 NITRD report made two educational technology recommendations: (a) support for NIT R&D to discover new educational technologies applicable from pre-school settings all the way through life-long learning and (b) support for a long-term program to assess promising educational technologies and facilitate the evolution of curricula and instructional processes to incorporate them. There does not appear to have been progress on either of those collaborative activities. New educational technologies are emerging that create an opportunity to advance education and training. To date, the Federal Government is providing no coordination and inadequate R&D to take advantage of these opportunities.”