Professor Robert Cooper has been honored with the Exemplary Contributions to Practice-Engaged Research Award from the American Educational Research Association (AERA). The award is presented to an education scholar or scholars in recognition of collaborative work between researchers and practitioners that have resulted in sustained and observable effects on practice.
Cooper, who leads the Education Minor Program at UCLA Education and is the faculty co-director of the Principal Leadership Institute (PLI), has been working on a project funded by the California Academic Partnership Program (CAPP) that looks at the ways that junior high schools and high schools establish and foster a college-going culture for their students. But Cooper, who serves on the CAPP Advisory Board, says that his research is largely guided by his role as a parent.
“Being a father and trying to get the best education possible for my own kids inspires my work,” he says. “But what pushes me is that the quality of education that I want for my own kids, I want for all kids. My daughters are in public schools and it has been was an ongoing battle for a quality education and understanding what they ought to be learning and what they ought to be exposed to. In that search, I learned about what I am fighting for in schools, for other students.”
The CAPP College-Going Culture project is a five-year collaboration – which is now in its second year – between the California State University (CSU) and ten California high schools. The project examines the strategies used by high schools in their transition to the Common Core State Standards and how those research-supported strategies increase a college-going culture among their students. Cooper says that the schools in this study focus on five principles including creating clear expectations of college; faculty involvement; effective counseling for college; supportive student-teacher relationships; and creating an academic identity for students.
“We came up with a model for high schools [focused] on their school culture, taking responsibility on what they do with students without blaming what happens to them in elementary and middle school,” he says. “I spend a lot of time going to schools, and trying to help them think through how to implement activities and programs and really systemic structures that address the inequalities that prohibit kids from being successful.
“We acknowledge that a lot of these students come from families or communities where they don’t have a lot of role models and families don’t have a lot of experience with college. So it becomes incumbent upon the school community to take responsibility and expose students to what college is all about.”
Cooper says that the school’s responsibility begins in the classroom. The CAPP project seeks to prepare teachers to provide accurate information to their students on A-G requirements and making sure that those college prep courses are available to all students.
“What we find is that everybody who has gone to college thinks they’re an expert, but it’s a really complicated process,” notes Cooper. “Because teachers are so critical to this process, they have to have the right relationship with students and they have to see that they are able and capable of going to college,” he says. “It’s about empowering teachers with accurate, timely, and relevant information about the college-going process.”
Cooper says that “tapping into the identity of students so they can see themselves as viable learners and people who can be successful in college” is key to creating a college-going culture.
“We are thinking through the mentoring process, and also focusing on a positive peer environment and how the schools structure opportunities for students to positively interact with each other,” he says. “Different schools do different things. For some schools, it’s about connecting kids to structured programs like AVID (Advancement Via Individual Determination), Gear Up, Upward Bound – some connection to an institution. Our student surveys have shown that students who are connected [to a college] in one way or another have a much greater trajectory to college than those who are not connected in some way.
“In other schools, it may be very different,” says Cooper. “It’s about being connected to other students who also see themselves as going to college. Again, when you go into low-income communities with underperforming schools, students don’t have a lot of role models of people who have been successful in the process. Part of what we try to do is make going to college, studying, and wanting to learn cool and acceptable at a school – therein lies a real challenge.”
Cooper, who is the director of the Undergraduate Education Minor, says that the program – one of the largest minor programs at UCLA – delineates for its students “the kinds of connections you can make with education across disciplines.”
“The interdisciplinary approach really resonates with students, particularly those who are trying to understand their own [educational] experience,” he says. “Many of our faculty are very excited when they teach undergraduate students; they enjoy the energy, the excitement that [undergraduates] bring to class. Even if [undergraduate students] are not going into education, the program helps them to be consumers of education, to see the many different career options in the field of education. They can work for nonprofits or for think tanks. They can work for corporate America because many corporations have training and professional development. So students begin to see many applications for what they’ve learned in our field of study.”
Professor Cooper is an Associate Professor in the Urban Schooling division at UCLA’s Graduate School of Education. His research interests include the politics of education, and the implementation and replication of equity-minded reform. Cooper has served as a Sloan Public Policy Fellow at Brandeis University, and a CORO Public Affairs Fellow. He earned his Ph.D. in education at UCLA and his master’s degree in public policy at Brandeis University.
Cooper, who grew up in Duarte, Calif., says that he was fortunate to attend some of the better schools in the working class community.
“In many ways, it was what we find today: a two-tier system,” he says. “A small group of kids can get a good education, but the majority of young people are left out of the educational process. I was one of the lucky ones, so I was able to take advantage of opportunities at the school, and in many ways, bought into the narrative that I was different, or that I could be different. I’m trying to make sure that one doesn’t get a quality education based on luck, but everyone is entitled to the right of a quality education.”
Cooper says that while he and his wife, who teaches elementary school, have the professional background to advocate for their children’s education, he realizes that many families do not have the knowledge or ability to do the same.
“I visit and conduct research at schools where kids are just kind of left behind in many different ways,” he says. “They are bright kids with bright futures, but the school hasn’t been able to change in ways that tap into that potential. I think that’s really the heart of the work that I’m trying to do.
“That’s why I’m so pleased and honored by the AERA award – it really [addresses] the crux of what I do, and that is to change schools and change the schooling process for young people. In our surveys of schools, I ask, ‘What is it about your schooling experience that made a difference for you?’ And most people can identify that one teacher or that one experience that made the difference. That’s what we have to do – we have to create a structure so that every kid can find that one adult or experience on campus that can make a difference.”