September 6, 2016. The Board of Directors of the La Mesa-Spring Valley Educational Foundation (LMSVEF) has voted to allocate $20,000 in support of practitioner research to be conducted by the district’s teachers, counselors, librarians and other educators in conjunction with the Social Publishers Foundation (SPF). The LMSVEF Board expressed enthusiastic support for the new partnership with SPF and is excited by the collaboration between district educators and the experienced researchers who volunteer with SPF to support educators wishing to engage in practitioner-research and publish the results of their projects. The initiative is called the La Mesa-Spring Valley Educational Foundation Education Research Grant Program. Proposals for funding will be reviewed by a joint committee of LMSVEF Board members and SPF Board members and Review panel members.
On September 8, the first of two workshops on applying for grants under this initiative was conducted by SPF Board President Lonnie Rowell and LMSV Educational Foundation board members Cheryl Neubecker and Karen Epler. The workshop was held at the La Mesa Academy of the Arts, with a variety of LMSV educators, including teachers, intervention specialist, and school librarian from five district schools attending the workshop. The goals of the workshop included (a) review of limitations of current approaches to educational research; (b) introduction of new approaches to practice-evidence in K-12 education, and (c) introduction of LMSVEF Education Research Grant and crowdfunding of practitioner-research projects and publication of practitioner-research through SPF.