December 2025 Emerging Research

Emerging Research Year in Review

Each month, the Emerging Research section of the Office of K-12 Outreach’s In Focus newsletter shares some scholarship that connects theory and practice, makes us think differently about K-12 education, and informs our work. Whether these featured reports, books, videos, papers, presentations, and project deliverables come from K-12 Outreach staff members or experts across Michigan State University’s College of Education, they serve as exemplars of how researchers can maintain high methodological standards and contribute to salient academic debates while keeping education practitioners front of mind in their study designs, data collection, findings, and communication of results. In spotlighting this work, we hope to disseminate nascent conclusions that could be relevant for educators and administrators, encourage other scholars to connect with these audiences at every stage of their research endeavors, and celebrate the ceaseless efforts of so many scholars hoping to better understand the K-12 education ecosystem for the sake of students, teachers, families, school leaders, and community members. 

As we have done since 2020, and in the reflective spirit of this month’s newsletter more broadly, we use the December 2025 Emerging Research to review the last year of these features (December 2020; December 2021; December 2022; December 2023; December 2024 Emerging Research). Hopefully, this revisitation offers readers the chance to reconnect with past research they might have missed during the hustle and bustle of the year, reconsider how this scholarship might impact their daily practice with new eyes, and reappreciate these academic contributions. Further, each year, we aspire for this year-end listing to inspire and guide other researchers to pursue practice-informed and practitioner-oriented scholarly work in 2026 and beyond. Keeping those goals in mind, in 2025, we used the: 

• January 2025 Emerging Research to explore two reports discussing the current state of Michigan’s educator workforce, the consequences of shortages, and some potential policy remedies to status quo labor challenges. These studies included the Education Trust-Midwest's “Closing the Opportunity Divide: Addressing Michigan’s Teacher Shortage Problem for Students Most in Need,” which was supported by K-12 Outreach Director of Data & Evaluation Dr. Jacqueline Gardner, and the “Michigan Teacher Shortage Study: 2025 Report” from the Education Policy Innovation Collaborative (EPIC) in MSU’s College of Education.
• February 2025 Emerging Research to help readers reflect on Black History Month and plan to translate their celebrations into action with the book Thoughtful Being: How the Mind’s Eye Plays a Role in the Formation of Black Identity and Racial Consciousness: 3 Ways to Think about Psychology Differently from Dr. Theodore S. Ransaw, former Outreach Specialist for the Office of K-12 Outreach and current Specialist for the Office of Access and Community Engagement (ACE). Additionally, this article reshared the 2021, 2022, and 2023 Black History Month resource guides from K-12 Outreach, the 2021 K-12 Outreach review of Black-authored books, and the 2024 Sankofa Project featured in the February 2024 In Focus newsletter.
• March 2025 Emerging Research to honor Women’s History Month with the K-12 Outreach Women’s History Month Resource Guide and the “Eloquent Educators: In the Spirit of…” series, which includes interviews with eight women who have flourished in their education careers.
• April 2025 Emerging Research to share how Abigail Bies, then a Graduate Assistant with K-12 Outreach’s Data & Evaluation Team, synergized research efforts connected to the pursuit of her Master of Public Policy (MPP) degree at MSU and K-12 Outreach’s 2024-25 Michigan Applied Public Policy Research (MAPPR) grant from the Institute for Public Policy and Social Research (IPPSR) focused on how Michigan K-12 districts managed the expiration of Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief (ESSER) funds. In reviewing Bies’ MPP capstone project, this feature celebrated emerging graduate research and teased where this grant would lead.
• May 2025 Emerging Research to dig further into scholarship concerning teacher labor market challenges, especially regarding substitute teachers, by covering the paper “Bring in the Subs: A Mixed-Method Investigation of The Substitute Teacher Labor Market in Michigan” from Dr. Chris Torres, Dr. Nathan Burroughs, Dr. Dirk Zuschlag, Dr. Rebecca Frausel, Calandra Reichel, and K-12 Outreach's Dr. Jacqueline Gardner.
• June 2025 Emerging Research to provide an update on K-12 Outreach’s work with Mavin Global and the Michigan Association of Secondary School Principals (MASSP) to bring research conclusions from a $10 million USDA-funded grant directly into Michigan K-12 classrooms. At this time, the project team had just piloted a virtual, AI-assisted agricultural career fair, involving more than 250 students at Northview High School, and this feature was a chance to note some initial insights, implementation successes, and plans for next steps.
• July 2025 Emerging Research to disseminate research findings from K-12 Outreach’s MAPPR-funded research on the ESSER fiscal cliff that were published in a one-pager for district leaders and policymakers, as well as a policy brief. In addition to being included in Emerging Research, conclusions from this project were shared during an IPPSR State of the State podcast, an IPPSR Public Policy Forum, and a WLNS interview.
• August 2025 Emerging Research to prepare for the start of the 2025-26 school year and celebrate the many ways that educators are heroes for their students and communities, as theorized in Dr. Theodore S. Ransaw’s book 21 Insightful Ways Teachers are Everyday Heroes!: Student Focused, Researched Based, and Classroom Tested Strategies. With that, this edition of Emerging Research included a feature of this publication from the College of Education.
• September 2025 Emerging Research to lift impactful EPIC-led research titled “Funding Michigan’s Future: Three Decades of School Finance and the Policy Questions Ahead.” Moreover, this article noted coverage of this analysis of school funding conditions by Dr. Jason Burns, EPIC Research Specialist, and Matthew Guzman, EPIC Graduate Assistant, in MSU Today, Bridge, WLNS, and The Daily News.
• October 2025 Emerging Research to analyze potential causes of teacher absenteeism and possible related solutions to this phenomenon based on the paper “Gaining A Better Understanding of Teacher Absenteeism: How Structural and Organizational Factors Impact A Teacher’s Decision to be Absent” by Dr. Jacqueline Gardner and Dr. Chris Torres.
• November 2025 Emerging Research to revisit the Office of K-12 Outreach’s support of the High Impact Leadership (HIL) for School Renewal project at Western Michigan University – a research practice partnership (RPP) connecting academic experts and leading practitioners with local schools to help them enact the school renewal process (July 2024, May 2023, and September 2021). Moving to the present, it also covered resultant research from this initiative that K-12 Outreach's own Dr. John Lane, Outreach Specialist, and WMU researchers Dr. Pat Reeves, Dr. Jianping Shen, and Dr. Mary Ebejer shared at the annual University Council for Educational Administration (UCEA) conference. 

As readers have some time this winter break to reflect on the scholarship they have engaged with over the last twelve months or to dig into some new reading (only after some relaxation, time with family and friends, and extensive holiday sweets), we hope this year in review can be a useful starting point. When the In Focus newsletter returns in January 2026, we are excited to continue featuring high-quality, high-impact research endeavors that purposefully link theory and practice for the benefit of students, educators, and administrators. We also hope that these previous features and this year in review might even inspire some future subjects of coverage by dedicated education-focused researchers. If readers have recommended research for us to consider in Emerging Research or in our work more broadly, they are encouraged to connect with our team at k12out@msu.edu.