Research Lesson 1 Template
Use the following template to create your research lesson. The first page of the
template describes the purpose of the research lesson to the observers. The next
three pages provide a lesson-planning template that the teacher uses to teach the
lesson. The last page tells the lesson observers what the lesson design team wants
them to look for.
This research lesson should be given to the lesson observers in advance of the
lesson so they are better prepared for the observation.
LESSON BACKGROUND
Lesson Haley Sonenthal, Calla Jordan, Julia Friedberg
designers:
Instructor: Roosevelt Institute Campus Network (via Loft)
Date: TBD
School / 18-22 year old college students
Grade:
1. TITLE OF THE LESSON:
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Policy Analysis Part 1: Background
2. GOALS
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The goal of this lesson is to lay out a process for students to follow when
writing policy briefs for policy analysis. Students will use this guide to create
policy briefs for the Roosevelt 10 Ideas Competition. Writing a policy brief is
not a skill that is required in national, state, or local standards, but it is
important.
The goal of lesson 1 is to help students outline the context, background,
history, and stakeholders of the issue that they are trying to solve.
3. LESSON RATIONALE: Why we chose to focus on this topic and goals.
(For example, what is difficult about learning/teaching this topic? What
do we notice about students currently as mathematical learners?) Why we
designed the lesson as shown below.
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(a) We know our students are very interested in public policy and enacting
legislative change, however not all the students in the Roosevelt Campus
Network have undergraduate curricula exposure to the material. Students
might be passionate about policy, but they have different levels of
understanding and experience with writing briefs. We are striving to bridge
the gap between students and the resources that are available to them.
○ Specifically, this lesson serves as a starting point for students. They
need to understand the full scope of an issue before they can analyze
and begin to propose new solutions.
(b) We know that students have difficulty with the actual writing format and
style of the briefs. (Talk to Roosevelt students about what has been most
difficult, what resources he has used, what else would be helpful.)
○ *We will ask our mentor and program users what they have difficulty
with during the scoping/background phase of the analysis process.
(c) The major focus of the lesson will be the writing process for the policy
brief including format, language, style, etc. We hope to streamline this
process for the students so that their research and content can be clear and
well presented.
○ This lesson, specifically is more aimed towards creating a strong
foundation of background knowledge for students to build. The lesson
will integrate two siloed checklists from Roosevelt’s existing materials:
stakeholders and history.
(d) Our lesson will help students accomplish the objective by outlining an
explicitly clear, multi-staged process that all will follow.
○ We hypothesize that defining a clear list of steps will help students
organize their background information so they know that they have
covered an adequate amount of material in their initial research.
4. How does students’ understanding of this topic develop? How does this
lesson fit within a unit, or within students’ experiences in prior and
subsequent grades?
Students who write policy briefs are often interested in government and public
policy, but are not necessarily public policy majors. The Roosevelt Institute provides
students with resources, but they need to be streamlined and centralized so that
they are more accessible and easy to follow and use.
*We will ask our mentor and program user about their prior experiences and
methods for going about initial research.
5. Relationship of the lesson to standards
The lesson should outline the process for creating high caliber policy briefs to
increase the amount of qualified applications (and eventual winners) for the 10
Ideas competition.
6. Steps to Writing a Policy Brief: Session 1
1)
2)
3)
4)
5)
6)
Background (stakeholders, history)
Analysis
Next Steps/Recommendation
Key Facts/Talking Points
Aim Statement
Title
LESSON TITLE: Background
INTRODUCTION: Give overview of lesson
-This lesson will focus on scoping the issue and developing context for their
policy analysis. In order to analyze a problem and propose solutions, they
must first understand the issue and existing policies.
LEARNING OBJECTIVES: By the end of the session participants will be able to
-Familiarize themselves with specific social problem or issue or interrelated
problems or issues
-Analyze the causes of social problems or issues
-Measure magnitude of problems and locate problems spatially
-Define key stakeholders
KEY MESSAGES
-History
-Stakeholders
-Existing related-policies
KEY TERMS
-Net outcome
-Key tradeoff
-Public good
TIME NEEDED
-TBD
MATERIALS
-Loft [replacement of Dropbox]
-Access to Peer Reviewed Journals, Academic Journals, Popular Press
Articles, Think Tank Publications, Government Sources (specific to individual
issue areas)
PREPARATION
-Students will need to have an idea of the issue they want to analyze. Aside
from that, they will not need to prepare extensively seeing as this lesson
serves as a starting point.
HISTORY
-Has this already been identified as a problem or are you the first person to
see it as such?
-How did the problem develop?
-Have you found primary sources?
-Is there a legislative history around solving this problem?
-This entails all relevant policy proposals, not just the history of your policy
idea.
-Why hasn't this problem been solved already?
-Does this problem exist in other communities?
-Has this problem been adequately addressed in other communities? If so,
how?
-What types of previous efforts failed to address this problem and why?
STAKEHOLDERS
-Who does this problem affect?
-Keep in mind how people are affected both directly and indirectly.
-Who will be positively impacted by your proposal?
-Who will be negatively impacted by your proposal?
-Why would someone be interested in maintaining the status quo?
-Who needs to support your policy proposal to make it politically viable?
-Who has tried to address this problem in the past?
-Who is currently working to address this problem?
SOURCES
-Becoming An Effective Policy Advocate by Bruce S. Jansson
-Roosevelt Thinks Policy Research Checklist
7. Data collection points during the lesson observation.
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Our team will collect data on:
○ Whether the respondent indicated he/she learned something new
Whether the respondent was able to adequately answer all of the
questions
○ Whether the respondent feels prepared to move on to the analysis
stage for the policy interest
○ Would they recommend this background preparation to a fellow
Roosevelt student
Outside observers are asked to collect data on:
○ Expressions of confusion or satisfaction
○ Conversations between students (topics; subject matter; questions
they ask)
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