Audience and Assumptions
- Jun 14, 2017
- 2 min read
Who will benefit from these posts?
When I conceived this blog, I thought a lot about the audience I wanted to reach: Was I going to target my message to parents, practitioners, or policymakers? Each of these groups has different informational needs.
Parents want to know how to help their own children succeed in school and life. Although findings from research are interesting, moms and dads know that what research says about groups of children may not work for their kid as an individual.
Educators want to know how to help prepare the students in their classrooms and schools for college. For educators, research findings can be very useful for framing problems and identifying solutions. However, teachers and administrators see research-based interventions come and go and many would like to just "close the door and teach."
Policymakers want to know how findings from research can be used to identify and frame policy solutions. Although anecdotal evidence about individual children and schools can be informative, policymakers want access to non-partisan, digestible, high-quality research findings and evidence-based next steps.
This blog will not always address the informational needs of all of these groups but I will do my best to address each of these audiences in my posts. Once I have more content up on the site, I will use keywords and tags so that information is easily sortable by audience and topic.
What are EMG's assumptions?
There are some basic assumptions that frame my work and that will underlie all of my posts. The first assumption is that all individuals have the right to earn a living in a fulfilling career and it is the role of parents, educators, and education policymakers to support our children's life dreams.
The second assumption is that nearly all jobs in the future will require some form of education after high school and so all students must graduate from high school ready for college. For some students, this may be career and technical education at a community college and others will require graduate school to achieve their dreams.
The third assumption is that systemic racism and classism exist and we must acknowledge and challenge the barriers in place for students who are low-income, from marginalized racial and ethnic groups, English language learners, and whose parents did not attend college. Correspondingly, we must acknowledge white privilege and work to dismantle it.
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