Graduate Student Resources
 
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AERA is committed to capacity building for & nurturing of future education researchers. AERA is home to more than 7,000 student members, including approximately 6,500 graduate students and 500 undergraduate students. Students represent over 28% of all AERA members.

The 2016 Annual Meeting Graduate Student Resource page is a one-stop-shop for graduate students looking for an Annual Meeting experience unique to their interests. This page includes Graduate Student Council information, tips, sessions, events, resources, and more geared for graduate students at the Annual Meeting. This page will be updated as event times are announced and opportunities emerge.


Welcome Events

 


AERA Welcoming Orientation for New Members and First-Time Attendees
Graduate students, new members and first-time meeting attendees are invited to an orientation session. This session offers an opportunity to learn more about AERA and the benefits of being a member, as well as helpful tips on navigating the Annual Meeting.

Graduate Student Orientation: Navigating AERA's Multiple Offerings
First time at AERA? Are you a returning graduate student hoping to get more or something new out of this year’s annual meeting? If so, then join us for this session focusing on how to navigate the annual meeting. Hear from current graduate students about tips and tricks for making the annual meeting work for you. Also, get information on the hidden gems that AERA has to offer both at the annual meeting and year round. Meet with representatives from various Divisions, SIGs, and the Graduate Student Council and learn how to get involved!


Pre-conference Workshop


Creating and Sustaining Successful Student-Run Publications: An AERA Pre-Conference Graduate Student Working Group Session


This pre-conference working group session on graduate student-run publications will (1) provide a space for current editors or others involved in running student-run journals to share ideas, procedures, and brainstorm solutions to common problems; (2) create a support network and offer advice to those seeking to start a student-run publication. The working group will address strategies for creating a self-sustaining student publication that builds lasting institutional memory beyond its founding team and builds professional skills for both its editorial teams and its authors.


Graduate Student Resource Center

The Annual Meeting Graduate Student Resource Center is a special meeting service for graduate students navigating the Annual Meeting. Stop in the GSRC during the Annual Meeting to meet AERA staff and learn about sessions, activities, and opportunities specifically geared towards students. 

Location: 
Convention Center, Room 140AB, Level One

Hours: 

Friday, April 8   12:00 p.m. - 6:00 p.m.
Saturday, April 9   8:00 a.m. - 6:00 p.m.
Sunday, April 10   8:00 a.m. - 6:00 p.m.
Monday, April 11   8:00 a.m. - 6:00 p.m.


Graduate Student Council Sessions

   
   
"... So Now That I'm Gonna Be a Dr.": Navigating the Academic Job Search With Diversity in Mind 
Date and Location: TBA

In this session geared toward graduate students and early career scholars currently involved in or planning to become involved in the academic job search process, audience members will have access to the insights of a diverse group of faculty members’ closely involved with academic job searches. Panelists include recently hired faculty members, job search committee chairs, and college Deans from teaching, comprehensive and research institutions. Special attention will be paid to navigating the process as historically underrepresented members of the academic community.


Speakers:

  • Kathy L. Wood
  • David H. Monk
  • Leroy L. Long
  • Erica Nicole Womack

Chairs:

  • Ashley N. Patterson
  • Eric Felix
  • Luis Antonio Leyva

Advancing Black Male Student Success from Preschool through Ph.D. 
Date and Location: TBA

Advancing Black Male Student Success will highlight current findings associated with Black males at various stages of the education system. Black boys and men encounter many challenges on their pursuit of education. This session will draw on current research, best practices, and statistics to present strategies and interventions geared toward disrupting the current educational trends facing Black males. Advice and strategies for educator, researchers, and scholars will be reviewed. Suggestions for prevention and intervention will be discussed.


Speakers:

  • Shaun R. Harper

Chairs:

  • Gabriel Joey Merrin
  • Kate Rollert

Bullying and Cyber Bullying: What Do We Know and Where Do We Go From Here?
Date and Location: TBA

Bullying and cyberbullying are both major public health concerns that schools across America and globally face. The results of face-to-face bullying have short- and long-term negative outcomes for perpetrators, victims, and bystanders. Cyberbullying is also a growing phenomenon that is affecting the lives of many youth. This session will review current research on the prevalence, the etiology, and preventative approaches related to bullying and cyberbullying involvement. Research clearly shows that these two behaviors overlap and share similar risk and protective factors. A social-ecological framework will be used to illustrate these factors as they relate to youth's involvement in both forms of bullying. Prevention efforts that stem from research will be discussed.


Speakers:

  • Dorothy L. Espelage
  • Chad Allen Rose
  • Sheri Bauman

Chairs:

  • Gabriel Joey Merrin
  • Matthew King

Early, Mid, and Late Career Scholars Open Forum on Publishing, Teaching, and Advising
Date and Location: TBA

This session will be setup as an informal open forum with professors at various stages in their academic careers (Early, Mid, and Late). Graduate students will be given the opportunity to submit questions by writing them on note cards or asking them aloud directly to the speakers. Scholars will answer questions from the audience and talk about their journeys to becoming a professors. This will be a fun session where lots of wisdom and experience will be shared. Make sure to bring your questions.


Speakers:

  • Dorothy L. Espelage
  • Chad Allen Rose
  • Anjali J. Forber-Pratt

Chairs:

  • Gabriel Joey Merrin
  • Matthew King

Fundamentals of Public Scholarship
Date and Location: TBA

A central goal of education research is to use scientific knowledge to strengthen and improve education for all. While at times a daunting task that all educational researchers pursue, we have learned that the general public and policy makers also drive changes and improvements in education. As a result, it is essential that the knowledge educational researchers discover be used in shaping public knowledge and the political environment with which educational policies are made. In the spirit of the conference theme, this session will present strategies, techniques, and skills related to public speaking and improvisation as well as how to tell your research “story” in ways that people outside of academia will care.


Speakers:

  • Ruth Maria López
  • Julian Vasquez Heilig
  • Jaime Del Razo

Chairs:

  • Gabriel Joey Merrin
  • Matthew King

Get your work published! Advice from emerging scholars on the writing process.
Date and Location: TBA

In this interactive working session, beginning and advanced doctoral students will learn about writing for publication from emerging scholars at different stages of the tenure process. The topics of this session will include: finding grants to support your writing, successfully navigating co-authorship, selecting the right journal, and giving and receiving feedback on your writing.

As part of this session, advanced students may participate in a Critical Friendship Group session where they will learn how to give and receive feedback using structured protocols from the School Reform Initiative. If you are interested in receiving feedback on your work while in this group, please bring 8 copies of a manuscript or paper in progress to share.


Speakers:

  • Erica K. Dotson
  • Stephanie Behm Cross
  • Nadia Behizadeh
  • Keisha L. Green
  • Ashley N. Patterson

Chairs:

  • Ashley N. Patterson
  • Bach Mai Dolly Nguyen

Graduate Student/Early Career Mentoring Collaborative, Community-Based Scholarship 

Date and Location: TBA

Urban Research-Based Action Network (URBAN) is committed to strengthening relationships between academics and community-based practitioners. Active members of URBAN will address relevant aspects of collaborative, community-based scholarship such as impact, ethical issues, navigating IRB, sharing findings, developing career pathways, and increasing the acceptance within the academy.


Speaker:

  • Ana Carolina Fernandes de Bessa Antunes
  • Linnea Kristina Beckett
  • Emily Borg
  • Julio Cammarota
  • Ronald David Glass
  • Shawn A. Ginwright
  • Elizabeth Hudson
  • Joyce E. King
  • Van Lac
  • Kelly Monahan
  • Sheeva Sabati
  • Mark R. Warren

Chairs:

  • Gabriel Joey Merrin
  • Atiya S Strothers
  • Paige M. Bray

Hip-Hop Theories, Praxis, and Pedagogies

Date and Location: TBA

Two years ago, the panelists submitted a petition to establish an AERA Special Interest Group (SIG) titled “Hip Hop Theories, Praxis, and Pedagogies”. On July 24, 2015, the AERA Executive Committee approved the petition for a new SIG-in-Formation. The purpose of this session is to present the individual work of each SIG officer as well as discuss the professionalization of Hip Hop pedagogy as a field of educational research. The papers are “Imagining Mattering: Hip Hop Civs Ed, Intersectionality, and Black Joy” (Love); “Festival Hopping with Run The Jewels: Contemporizing Race Relations in Hip Hop Pedagogical Performance” (Wilson); “Towards a Framework for the 6th Element: Reality Pedagogy for #HipHopEd(ucators)“ (Emdin); and “Black Girl Genius” (Brown).


Speakers:

  • Joycelyn Wilson
  • Bettina L. Love
  • Christopher Emdin
  • Ruth Nicole Brown

Chairs:

  • Gabriel Joey Merrin
  • Kate Rollert

Division Fireside Chats

Sorted alphabetically by Division.  
   
Division A Fireside Chat. Politics and Power in Community Policing and Community Schooling

Date and Location: TBA

Areas of educational research such as grassroots organizing, parent and community engagement, school improvement, and school leadership are committed to improving and understanding community policing and schooling relationships. Yet, too often our research does little to foster public solving. In this session, we turn to the public for answers. This Fireside Chat aims to understand how politics and power shape community policing and community schooling from the perspectives of policymakers, school leaders, and community members. By focusing on recent national cases of community policing, we aim to: 1) establish the ways in which community policing is deeply related to community schooling; 2) identify examples of how power is shared; and 3) articulate policy priorities that will help rebuild school communities.


Speakers:

  • Sonya Douglass Horsford
  • Corynne Deliberto
  • Elijah Cummings

Chair:

  • Priya Goel La Londe

Division B Fireside Chat. #BlackLivesMatter: Integrating Current Sociopolitical, Economic, and Cultural Events Into U.S. Public School Curriculum for Critical Consciousness

Date and Location: TBA

This session sparks a conversation about the ways students and teachers can co-create critically conscious curriculum that combats corporatized, marginalized, and deficit education models. Because U. S. socio-political, economic and cultural climates have brought transracial and transgender crisis into the classroom, K-12 curriculum should prepare students to understand these difficult topics and to connect these events to their lives and communities. Further, the lack of critical curriculum promotes systems of standardized schooling, the prison industrial complex, and Black and Brown bodies being pushed out of school. As we situate the conversation in current events, we hope to create a cohesive contextual curriculum of resistance, activism, wellness, and, in some cases, survival.


Speakers:

  • Lamar L. Johnson
  • Denise M. Taliaferro Baszile
  • Joshua Rovner
  • Crystal T. Laura
  • Theodorea Regina Berry

Chairs:

  • Adrianne Rochelle Pinkney
  • Tiffany J. Williams

Division C Fireside Chat. The Journey from Doctoral Student to a Tenure Track Job

Date and Location: TBA

Many graduate students believe that navigating the job market consists of following a precise flow chart with little room to stray from the course. However, there are many different roads that may be traveled when seeking tenure line employment. Not all are immediately following a dissertation defense or the completion of a post doc. This Fireside Chat will introduce a collection of professors, each with a unique tale of how they traveled the sometimes frustrating, but rewarding road from doc student to professor. The session will begin with an introduction of each panel member, followed by a 60-minute session where our panelists will answer questions posed from attendees. Graduate students of all stages are encouraged to attend.


Speakers:

  • Andrew T. Kemp
  • Debbie Sonu
  • Nel Noddings
  • Steven Page
  • Joseph E. Flynn
  • Alexander Means
  • William White
  • Joel H. Spring
  • Sabrina Nicole Ross-Griffin
  • Antonia Darder
  • Seungho Moon

Participant:

  • Molly Quinn

Chair:

  • Thom Michael Suhy

Division D Fireside Chat. The Pulchritudinous Potential of Public Data

Date and Location: TBA

Public-use educational data is often used by graduate research methodology programs for demonstrating different analyses. These datasets are also often the basis for manuscripts that answer substantive questions. However, the full extent of the data available to students and researchers is often not utilized. The Pulchritudinous Potential of Public Data will help students understand the breadth, complexity, and availability of the many sources of public-use data. Panelists representing both the institutions responsible for publishing the data and researchers that heavily utilize the data will discuss: (1) how students can utilize the data for their own studies; (2) the importance of using such data; and (3) the challenges that arise when using such data.

 


Speakers:

  • Laura M. Stapleton
  • David Kaplan
  • Elise Christopher
  • Johanna Bleckman

Chairs:

  • Christopher Runyon
  • Kristen Lynn Smith

Division E Fireside Chat. Bridging the "Knowing-Doing Gap": Strategies for Engaging Communities, Researchers, and Practitioners for Social Justice in Education

Date and Location: TBA

As education research moves toward public scholarship that includes the communities in which investigation is conducted, graduate students should become well versed in methods that incorporate a community voice. Additionally, once this research is conducted, the results must make it back into the public sphere to be of use to the community. The aim of this session is to provide graduate students a) strategies for conducting community based participatory research, b) suggestions for study buy-in and being culturally responsive to the needs of community members, and c) techniques for translating research into practice and policy.


Speakers:

  • Aaron Schutz
  • Mavis G. Sanders
  • Vajra M. Watson
  • Helen Janc Malone
  • Ivory A. Toldson
  • Myriam L. Baker
  • Shelley Zion

Chairs:

  • Taryn Hargrove Gore
  • Alaina Elizabeth Flannigan

Division F Fireside Chat. That Elusive Method: Historiography

Date and Location: TBA

This fireside chat will give attendees the opportunity to hear from scholars who use historiography as not only a way of positioning their work within scholarship, but also as a vibrant and integral part of the historical narrative. Thus, the question is not “how do you do it,” but “how do particular scholars do it.” We shall address not only foundational questions like “is historiography a method or a study of its own?” and “what are the most important questions to ask first when doing historiographic research on a topic?”, but also scholar specific questions like “how do you define historiography and has that evolved?” and “how does your own social experience shape your historiographical lens?”

 


Speakers:

  • Wayne Urban
  • Eileen H. Tamura
  • Milton C. Gaither
  • Vanessa Siddle Walker
  • Nancy Beadie

Chairs:

  • La'akea K. Yoshida
  • Atiya S Strothers

Division G Fireside Chat. Social Contexts and Public Research: Ways We Engage Educational Stakeholders and Policymakers to Enact Change

Date and Location: TBA

To enact change in educational spaces there is a need to get research into the hands of policymakers and education stakeholders, including youth, families, community organizations, teachers, etc. Emphasizing a social context approach, this Fireside Chat brings the experience and wisdom of scholars who conduct translational research that evokes change in educational policies, structures, and practices. Graduate students are encouraged to engage in a conversation around the ways in which researchers work with and within communities to create public scholarship for the purpose of educating diverse democracies.

 


Speakers:

  • Kevin Kumashiro
  • Pedro Noguera
  • Rodney K. Hopson
  • Glenabah M. Martinez
  • Maria Elena Torre

Division H Fireside Chat. Affirmative Action: Past, Present, and the Immediate Future

Date and Location: TBA

This Fireside Chat session aims to encapsulate the purpose; past, present, and future state of affirmative action from an historical standpoint in several arenas from a multitude of professional perspectives. Panelists represent national perspectives from k-16 educational institutions as well as Educational Policy leaders. Our discussion will encompass the effects of research, modification in educational practices, teacher education, policy implementation/modification, and college admission and recruitment as effected by the nation’s current court verdicts on affirmative action.


Speakers:

  • John Wolfe
  • Dewayne Morgan
  • Thy Nguyen

Chairs:

  • Oral B. Grant
  • Stephanie Peters

Division I Fireside Chat. Translating Scholarship for the Local and Global Public Forum

Date and Location: TBA

As graduate students pursue bigger and more complex research endeavors, many may question the utility and impact of their scholarship. For many of us pursuing a career in professional education, the intent and aim for our research is to inevitably shape public policy. Whether it be in academia or the private sector, in a local setting or a global setting, scholarship can have a lasting impact on curriculum, metrics, personnel, and legislation. But how do we maximize the influence of our work? This Fireside Chat will answer these questions—and more—through a panel discussion with several distinguished scholars and practitioners who will share their experiences from their career trajectory.


Speakers:

  • LuAnn Wilkerson
  • Lawrence "Hy" Doyle
  • Eugene L. Anderson
  • Danette Waller McKinley
  • Monica M. Cuddy
  • Mark A. Albanese

Participant:

  • Dorthea H. Juul

Chairs:

  • Michael Soh
  • Sarah B. McBrien

Division J Fireside Chat. Addressing Equitable Student Support across Marginalized College Student Populations

Date and Location: TBA

The purpose of this session is to facilitate a dialogue on student support in higher education across different social groups and identify opportunities for education policy, curriculum and teaching to provide equitable support for all students. In an interactive panel discussion, this session will explore marginalized student experiences navigating institutional spaces, discuss current concerns with the support of disadvantaged students in higher education, and facilitate a discussion on opportunities for changes in education policy, curriculum and teaching that sustain quality leadership and provide access to high-quality educational experiences for all. Participants will leave with perspectives from a variety of higher education scholars who study and/or work with these student populations to better inform their own views and practice.

 

Speakers:

  • Lisa E. Wolf-Wendel
  • Aimee LaPointe Terosky
  • Luis Ponjuan
  • Ronald Hallett
  • Leslie D. Gonzales

Chairs:

  • Kyleah Parson
  • Luis Antonio Leyva
  • Ah Ra Cho

Division K Fireside Chat. Relevance to Practice: Designing (Graduate) Research on Teacher Education for Equity and Justice

Date and Location: TBA

Div K is inspired by Gutiérrez and Penuel’s (Educational Researcher, 2014) assertion that, “consequential research on meaningful and equitable educational change requires a focus on persistent problems of practice, examined in their context of development, with attention to ecological resources and constraints, including why, how, and under what conditions programs and policies work” (p. 19). This Fireside Chat will help Graduate Students who are interested in designing research studies in the area of teacher education that enact the principles Gutiérrez and Penuel speak of in their article. The dialogue with the authors will be invaluable to many graduate students who are thinking about how their scholarship can be relevant to practice and social change in teaching and teacher education.

Speakers:

  • Kris D. Gutiérrez
  • William R. Penuel

Chairs:

  • Laura Carolina Chavez-Moreno
  • Maria Ferris Greene Wallace
  • A. Lin Goodwin

Division L / GSC Joint Fireside Chat. Reducing Research Misuse and Disuse: Taking Scholarship beyond the Journal to Public Influence

Date and Location: TBA

Education scholars have documented the weak link between research evidence and policymaking (Lubienski, Scott, & DeBray, 2014). When research is taken up, it is often misused or misunderstood. This session brings influential education policy scholars together to address two issues. First, this session will examine the politics of how research is produced, promoted, and used, highlighting the barriers that limit the efficacy of research. Second, panelists will describe the actions they have taken and tools they have used to promote their work and increase its likelihood of affecting policy. Panelists will also discuss whether researchers’ roles end when the research project is complete or whether scholars have a responsibility to promote their work and act as public intellectuals.

Speakers:

  • Angela Valenzuela
  • Gary A. Orfield
  • Patricia C. Gándara
  • Christopher A. Lubienski
  • Janelle T. Scott
  • Elizabeth H. DeBray
  • Frederick M. Hess
  • Julian Vasquez Heilig
  • James D. Anderson
  • Pedro A. Noguera
  • Helen F. Ladd

Chairs:

  • Marialena Dawn Rivera
  • Kate Rollert
  • Megan J. Austin
  • Julie K. Marsh

 
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