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Research Planning
WEPC’s Policy-Aligned Research Agenda Building Lab (PARABL) helps education system leaders develop a strategic roadmap of research questions aligned to a specific policy area or initiative.
Make research part of your policy strategy
A policy-aligned research agenda goes beyond identifying interesting questions to study. It maps out which questions need to be answered — and when — so evidence is ready when key decisions need to be made.
PARABL (Policy-Aligned Research Agenda Building Lab) brings the facilitation, structure, and research expertise to build that agenda with education system leaders’ teams.
Together, we surface priorities, challenge assumptions, assess what your data can support, and turn the intended policy goals into a focused, sequenced research plan.
The result is a practical roadmap for using evidence across the full arc of a change effort — from making the case to getting implementation right to sustaining what works.
How PARABL works
1. Discovery via facilitated working sessions
Through facilitated working sessions, we bring policy priorities, stakeholder perspectives, and research expertise together to identify the questions most important to your change effort.
2. Draft a focused research roadmap
We turn those priorities into a focused roadmap that includes a set of research questions, sequenced around key decision points and informed by the feasibility of your available data
3. (Optional) Facilitate introductions to faculty and researchers
If helpful, WEPC will also connect you with the faculty and researchers whose expertise is well matched to the research agenda and the work ahead.
4. (Optional) Further research collaboration
At this point, the research agenda can stand on its own, or lead into a longer-term WEPC partnership in which we conduct the research alongside your team and help translate findings into action.
What partners say about us
“The WEPC team takes the time to help me understand the choices we are making as we design our research.
Even though I am not a professional researcher, they take the time to understand my perspective and experience and to help me understand the pros and cons of different design choices we might make.
They also do the very hard work of communicating with the organization's bureaucracy.”
Program Manager at a Local Education Agency
Get in touch
Have a policy goal that needs a stronger evidence strategy?
Let’s talk about the change you’re pursuing, the decisions ahead, and how a policy-aligned research agenda could help you move it forward.
→ Reach out to us: wheelockpolicy@bu.edu