The mission of the National Academy of Education (NAEd) is to advance high-quality education research and its use in policy and practice. The NAEd accomplishes this by fostering the next generation of scholars through funding and professional development opportunities.
The postdoctoral fellowship, established with support from the Spencer Foundation, focuses on enabling early-career scholars to undertake substantial education research projects. The program prioritizes proposals that show promise of making significant contributions to the education field while also supporting the recipients' career advancement. The research topic must focus primarily on education, but the fellowship welcomes postdocs from any academic discipline or professional field. Fellowship recipients have included individuals from anthropology, architecture, art history, communications, economics, education, history, linguistics, literature, philosophy, political science, psychology, public health, religion, and sociology. The fellowship does not limit eligibility to these fields.