That’s the message from Professor Scott Eacott for anyone considering applying for a 2024 Workshop Grant from the Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia before the deadline of 25 August 2023.
Scott Eacott is Deputy Director of the Gonski Institute for Education, Professor in the School of Education at UNSW Sydney and an Adjunct Professor in the Department of Educational Administration at the University of Saskatchewan and in July 2022 he received a grant to convene an Academy-funded, two-day workshop. Even pandemic conditions could not prevent ‘two fruitful days of ideas and discussions’ he says with a diverse group of 20 ‘academics, professional associations, key entities, and those working in schools (aka, teachers)’ all focused on building education systems for equity and excellence.
An Academy-funded Workshop is a unique opportunity to assemble wide expertise ‘to seriously engage with large-scale problems’ and integrate multiple perspectives. With a dinner in between the two workshop days to fuel ideas and connections, the process led to ‘evidence-based and practically grounded recommendations’ and a final report—Building education systems for equity and inclusion—that is ‘a valuable resource’ for anyone looking for ‘high impact areas for intervention’, including governments, policy makers, the education profession and researchers. This would not have been possible without ‘the diversity in the room and the time to work through ideas’, says Scott Eacott. He also thinks that ASSA’s standing was a bonus: providing a platform for reporting the findings to a wider audience.
‘Our workshop has been an incubator for other projects, collaborations, and the opportunity to engage with a wide range of stakeholders that would not have happened otherwise’, he says. ‘I cannot recommend the program enough.’
What could a workshop grant do for your social science research?
Find more on this and other Academy-funded Workshops here.
Applications for the Academy’s 2024 Workshop Program close on Friday 25 August. Why don’t you click here to apply now?