Aspiring to shape education policy for equity: Lessons from graduate education

Many educational researchers discuss policy implications of their work and aspire to have an impact on policy. However, shaping policy requires academics to step away from the “comfort zone” of critique in the academy and into the world of politics, where they must act in unfamiliar ways and understand their role and positioning as academics relative to other policy actors. Drawing on three years’ experience team-teaching an interdisciplinary seminar and the first author’s extensive background in state-level education policy and political circles, we present challenges and lessons learned from training graduate students to engage directly in policy and share recommendations for faculty who want to foster political engagement among their own students. Specifically, we argue that faculty should: nurture aspirational thinking about policy; demystify policymakers to empower students as policy actors; cultivate unexpected allies; encourage students to see themselves as “expert enough” in contrast to politicians; and get comfortable thinking like lobbyists. We assert the advantages of an interdisciplinary approach that incorporates students from different graduate programs with different definitions of equity and share ideas for class activities that are intended to get graduate students thinking about policy aspirations and outcomes beyond the classroom.