As the American Educational Research Association (AERA) marks its centennial year, several scholars from the centennial state are helping plan the organization’s big celebration and annual meeting held April 8-12 in Washington, D.C.
Along with the AERA President Jeannie Oakes, AERA Annual Meeting co-chairs Kevin Welner and Michelle Renée have built the meeting around the theme, Public Scholarship to Educate Diverse Democracies, with key support from CU Boulder PhD candidates Michael Harris and Kathryn Wiley and UCLA PhD student Anthony Berryman.
The public scholarship centennial theme is befitting as this year also marks the 100-year anniversary of John Dewey’s influential book, Democracy and Education. Dewey maintained that scholars must engage democratically with “publics” in ways that raise awareness of social problems and foster an informed and public deliberation of those problems. With this admonition in mind, the planning team designed the meeting to reinvigorate the progressive aspirations that gave rise to the AERA professional community in 1916 — hope and determination that research can strengthen public education, society’s most democratic institution.
Public scholarship exists in a wide variety forms, including conducting collaborative research with communities and educators, writing for audiences beyond other academics, commenting in the media, and testifying at government hearings, Welner said. Engaged scholarship is designed to inform civic participation, decision-making and action. With this in mind, the team organized “Ed Talks,” modeled after TED Talks, including a forthcoming talk by Bill Penuel, director of the National Center for Research in Policy and Practice.
The AERA Annual Meeting is the largest gathering of scholars in the field of education research. If you will be in Washington, D.C. for the meeting, be on the lookout for presentations featuring School of Education faculty and students and drop by the Colorado Reception on April 10 at the Convention Center, or tune in from home via AERA live-streaming. The AERA Annual Meeting is the largest gathering of scholars in the field of education research.
Related Faculty: Kevin Welner, Michelle Renée Valladares, Kathryn E. Wiley, Michael Harris