AERA Executive Director Levine

AERA Executive Director Felice J. Levine and Visiting Scientist Lori Diane Hill this month were featured at several sessions related to the second annual meeting of the South African Education Research Association (SAERA), held in Durban, South Africa.

Levine delivered a plenary keynote address, titled “The International Footprint of Education Research: A 21st-Century Work in Progress,” which provided an overview of the field of education research from an international perspective, speaking to the state, status, and conditions of education research as a field and the challenges and opportunities that lie ahead.

AERA Visiting Scientist Hill; Aslan Fatarr, SAERA Incoming President; AERA Executive Director Levine

Andrew Kaniki, National Research Foundation, South Africa with AERA Executive Director Levine

Levine noted that SAERA, AERA, and other education research associations have the opportunity to shape research and data agendas by sharing research findings and data across borders and countries.

Levine called for education research associations worldwide to commit to high standards of quality in their work, to foster policies and principles that engender high quality in training the next generation of researchers, and to create an international dialogue.

During a pre-conference workshop for emerging scholars, Levine and Hill presented on “Shaping Education Research: Looking Back to the Future.” In the presentation, they identified a key question for shaping the future of education research in South Africa: How can we, as individual scholars, help shift the trend from “research output” toward strengthening the cumulative knowledge base in education research? They also discussed the process of building individual research agendas and advancing educational research.

AERA Executive Director Levine with  Stephanie Burton, Vice President for Research and Postgraduate Education,  University of Pretoria

Following the SAERA conference, Levine was featured at a University of Pretoria seminar on ethically responsible research. Titled “Human Research Participants and the Ethically Responsible Advancement of Science,” Levine’s presentation mapped some of the core considerations in the review and conduct of research in the human sciences, with special attention to issues of consent, privacy, and confidentiality; data protection and data use; and risk and risk reduction. Levine addressed key issues in aligning and improving regulations and practices to facilitate human research protection and the advancement of knowledge.