The American Federation of Teachers' Educational Research & Dissemination program has come to represent one of the union’s major efforts to improve student achievement by making a difference in teacher, paraprofessional and school-related personnel performance and professional growth.

Through its focus on providing educators with instructional tools to change practice and promote student achievement, it has enhanced the union’s organizing efforts and been the source of a new kind of union activism.

The  program is a union-sponsored, research-based professional development program. It was created by the AFT through collaboration between practitioners and researchers to encourage classroom educators to improve their practice and their students’ achievement by using research.

The AFT has long recognized that a base of research-grounded knowledge is essential to professional practice. Through the creation of the ER&D program in 1981, the AFT began a systematic process to translate, codify, and disseminate quality educational research findings about teaching and learning to classroom teachers.

As a professional development program, the ER&D process is different from traditional in-service. ER&D affords pre-K-12 and postsecondary classroom educators the opportunity to gain access to research on teaching and learning in a form that lets them apply those findings effectively. It also helps practitioners understand the value of using research findings to guide classroom practice.

In 1990, ER&D expanded its reach to include classroom paraprofessionals. Further recognizing the invaluable contributions non-classroom staff make to maintaining safe and orderly learning environments, and realizing the lack of training and support for such staff, ER&D in 1997 introduced a research-based course on managing student behavior in non-classroom settings for all school-related personnel.