Should I work at a lab prior to getting my PhD in Education? Do applicants to the field of education even apply to work in labs prior to applying? Does it truly help?
I'm in an educational psychology PhD program at a large R1 university that's not especially competitive or prestigious and there are many students who had no research or lab experience before starting.  That being said, working in a lab may help your application to be more competitive, particularly if you work in a lab at the university you're applying to (so you can meet people) or you have opportunities to publish or present research (which I think would be sort of rare for a non-student employee, but I could be wrong).  In fact, my program has a lot of part-time students who teach (or do some other school-related position) during the day and take classes towards their MS/PhD in the evenings, who have never worked in a lab, and who intend to go back into teaching (or school admin or school psychology or whatever) after they finish the degree.