Fostering Interdisciplinary Research on Education (FIRE)

FIRE is a strand of the Research and Evaluation on Education in Science and Engineering (REESE) program (NSF 10-586) and it is anticipated that FIRE will eventually be incorporated into the REESE solicitation. The FIRE program seeks to facilitate the process by which scholars can cross disciplinary boundaries to acquire the skills and knowledge that would improve their abilities to conduct rigorous research on STEM learning and education. The primary goal of the strand is to facilitate the development of innovative theoretical, methodological, and analytic approaches to understanding complex STEM education issues of national importance and, by so doing, make progress toward solving them. A secondary goal of the strand is to broaden and deepen the pool of investigators engaged in STEM educational research. In order to address this goal, investigators must pair with a mentoring scholar in a to-be-learned field of interest. Proposals therefore have both a research and a professional development component. Investigators may receive a FIRE award at any point in their post-graduate careers.