2023 AERA Presidential Address A Framework for Designing Consequential Research

Building from established literature and his research, Milner introduces a framework for designing consequential research. The framework is constructed to help researchers design, identify, and assess research as potentially consequential. In particular, the framework is developed for researchers to intentionally include essential elements that might lead to consequentiality: research worth conducting because it identifies problem spaces with an explicit aim to solve, address, and improve them. Six interrelated principles shape the framework in designing consequential research: (a) understand and connect history, (b) respond to and advance knowledge base, (c) amplify researcher positionality, (d) reject essentializing and polarizing, (e) prioritize voices of those most marginalized, and (f) consider multiple dissemination outlets.