Wisconsin Center for Education Research

Wisconsin Center for Education Research (WCER), located in Madison, Wisconsin, United States, is an education research center founded in 1964 as a branch of the School of Education at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. WCER currently has extramural funding of approximately $40 million, and is home to over 500 faculty, staff, graduate and undergraduate students who are engaged in more than 100 research projects that investigate a variety of topics in education.

Mission
Throughout its history, WCER has maintained a commitment to improving American education by studying varied learning environments and interventions and their effects on students. Of primary concern to this mission has been the question of how educational processes and social policy can best meet the needs of students from different cultural and educational backgrounds. WCER researchers have continually asked how educational "best practices" can be made more efficient, better supported, more strategic, and thus easier to implement.

Research projects

 * ALTELLA - Alternate English Language Learning Assessment Project
 * C2L - Contextualize to Learn
 * CALL - Comprehensive Assessment of Leadership for Learning
 * CCHER - Culture, Cognition, and Evaluation of STEM Higher Education Reform
 * CCWT - Center for Research on College-Workforce Transitions
 * The Discussion Project
 * CEE - Center for Ethics in Education
 * CIMER - Center for the Improvement of Mentored Experiences in Research
 * CIRTL – Center for the Integration of Research, Training and Learning
 * CRECE - Center for Research on Early Childhood Education
 * Epistemic Analytics
 * Field Day
 * Fortalezas Familiares
 * Family-School-Community Alliance
 * EMPOWER
 * The Institute for Innovative Assessment
 * ILDL - Interactive Learning & Design Lab
 * ITP - Interdisciplinary Training Program in Education Sciences
 * The LEAD Center - Learning through Evaluation, Adaption, and Dissemination
 * Learning, Cognition, and Development Lab
 * MEP - Madison Education Partnership
 * MSAN – Minority Student Achievement Network
 * NSIA - National Study of Intercollegiate Athletics
 * RERIC - Rural Education Research & Implementation Center
 * School Mental Health Collaborative
 * Study of Children's Thinking
 * TDOP - Teaching Dimensions Observation Protocol
 * TPdM - Tracking the Process of Data Driven Decision-Making in Higher Education
 * WCER Fellows Program
 * WEC - Wisconsin Evaluation Collaborative
 * Wei LAB – Wisconsin’s Equity and Inclusion Laboratory
 * WIDA
 * VETWAYS - The Veteran Education to Workforce Affinity and Success Study
 * WCER Clinical Program

Notable faculty

 * Courtney Bell became the director of WCER in 2020.
 * Former WCER Director Adam Gamoran, is the president of the William T. Grant Foundation. He remains the John D. MacArthur Professor of Sociology and Educational Policy Studies.
 * Gloria Ladson-Billings is an American pedagogical theorist and teacher educator on the faculty of the University of Wisconsin–Madison School of Education. She is known, among other things, for her groundbreaking work in the fields of Culturally Relevant Pedagogy and Critical race theory.