|
 Thanks
to generous funding from Carnegie
Corporation of New York, CIRCLE will make grants to
support research on civic education at the high school
level.
Goals
CIRCLE funds rigorous research, not advocacy, education,
or other forms of practice. However, all CIRCLE-funded
research should be relevant to and have implications for
public policy and/or practice.
In this Request for Proposals (RFP), CIRCLE is seeking
research that will help educators and policymakers to
improve civic outcomes for US students of high-school
age (roughly 14-18). “Civic outcomes” include, but are
not limited to:
knowledge of politics, democracy and civil society;
knowledge of social issues;
values such as tolerance, trust, patriotism, concern
for others’ rights and well-being, and efficacy (the belief
that one can make a difference);
skills and habits of deliberating about public issues
and participating in politics and community affairs;
volunteering and membership in voluntary and/or nonprofit
groups; and
intentions to vote or to consider careers in public
service (in the government or nonprofit sectors).
CIRCLE is interested in research on interventions and
reforms that may enhance civic outcomes. These interventions
and reforms include, but are not limited to:
programs of civic education and classes on history,
democracy, or law;
approaches to the teaching of other disciplines that
may have civic benefits;
co-curricular activities, including student government
and student media;
service-learning;
games and simulations that involve political or civic
issues;
student voice or participation in the governance of
their schools;
the basic structure of high schools (including their
size, focus, requirements, climate, admissions criteria,
or composition);
professional development for teachers, so long as the
effects on students can be assessed; and
after-school or community-based programs, insofar as
these have the potential to reach large numbers of adolescents
or to change mainstream education.
In most CIRCLE-funded research projects, the outcomes
will be civic knowledge, values, skills, or behaviors.
However, we are also interested in research that explores
whether being civically engaged helps academic outcomes
or positive adolescent development.
Parameters for Research
CIRCLE welcomes all rigorous methodologies, including
qualitative, normative, and quantitative studies. We
have funded, and expect to fund in the future, genuine
field experiments, quasi-experimental designs, longitudinal
studies, cross-sectional surveys, re-analysis of existing
datasets, historical studies, qualitative designs such
as ethnographies, interviews, and case studies, and
normative arguments.
CIRCLE welcomes proposals from academics, students
(especially PhD candidates at the dissertation stage),
independent scholars, practitioners, and research nonprofits
and firms. CIRCLE also welcomes proposals from youth
of high school age, perhaps working in partnership with
adults. Such youth-led research proposals will be evaluated
separately and not compared directly to proposals from
adults.
CIRCLE generally prefers independent studies over projects
in which participants describe and evaluate their own
work. CIRCLE will fund program evaluations only to the
extent that they generate significant findings for other
groups. In other words, we will fund research that uses
programs as opportunities to test general hypotheses;
we will not support program evaluations for the
purpose of measuring or improving the performance of
particular organizations.
Procedures and Deadlines
Applicants are invited to submit letters of inquiry
(LOI’s) no later than December 15, 2005 at 5 pm Eastern
Standard Time. The LOI should address:
goals and purposes of the proposed research;
relevance to civic outcomes for high-school-age students;
relevance to policy and/or practice;
methodology, with a justification and some details about
any proposed quantitative or qualitative data;
qualifications of the researcher(s);
a timeline;
a proposed set of “deliverables,” such as one or more
CIRCLE Working Papers, scholarly articles, datasets, or
policy briefs; and
a preliminary itemized budget with narrative.
CIRCLE staff will make a preliminary selection and
then solicit full proposals from some applicants. We
will mail these requests for full proposals on January
13, 2006. The deadline to return full and final proposals
to us will be Feb. 17, 2006. CIRCLE will then use a
peer-review process to advise us in making our final
decisions. The target date for announcing awards is
April 3, 2006. After the announcement, a period of approximately
six weeks is usually necessary to complete financial
arrangements between the University of Maryland and
the grantee and to disburse the first money.
Procedures
CIRCLE seeks to make information as widely available
as possible. To this end, CIRCLE reserves the right
to disseminate all data generated from CIRCLE grants,
usually via our website at www.civicyouth.org, unless
the applicant negotiates a specific exception or postponement.
CIRCLE also reserves the right to disseminate research
abstracts and short summaries based on all our grantees’
work. Grantees are normally invited to provide longer
CIRCLE products such as Working Papers and Fact Sheets.
All public products based in this RFP must acknowledge
support from “Carnegie Corporation of New York and CIRCLE
(The Center for Information & Research on Civic Learning
& Engagement).”
Non-itemized overhead or indirect costs are limited
to 10% of the project budget.
The total pool of money available in this RFP is $500,000.
CIRCLE has never chosen to make a grant in excess of
$100,000 and is unlikely to exceed that limit in this
competition.
Grants made under this RFP will expire no later than
December 30, 2008. The proposed timeline should indicate
that all CIRCLE-funded research will be complete and
all products created by that date, at the latest.
Electronic submissions are preferred. If you choose
to send a hard copy please also send an electronic copy.
Letters of Inquiry should be sent to:
Dionne Williams
dwillia8@umd.edu
CIRCLE
School of Public Policy
2101 Van Munching Hall
University of Maryland
College Park, MD 20742
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