Over 100 of AERA’s leaders convened on October 24–25 in Washington, D.C., for the association’s 2014 Coordinated Committee Meeting (CCM). This annual event provides an opportunity for most AERA committees to meet and address issues of significance to the field. AERA President Joyce E. King presided.
Committee agendas ranged widely. The Government Relations Committee held key meetings with federal officials, including with Rita Zota, program analyst of the Office of Management and Budget, who has direct responsibilities for budgetary and policy issues related to the Institute of Education Sciences.
The Social Justice Action Committee and the Committee on Scholars and Advocates for Gender Equity in Education began initial conversations with staff on possible new approaches to collecting gender data as part of AERA’s demographic data collection.
The Research Advisory Committee and the Annual Meeting Policies and Procedures Committee jointly considered peer-review processes and the development of webinars to introduce new reviewers to the elements of quality reviewing. Other committee agendas were of equal importance to the field and AERA.
CCM this year also provided quality time for cross-talk. President King and Executive Director Felice J. Levine identified “Connecting Research to Practice and Policy” as the major theme. The issue was addressed in a symposium that featured Kent McGuire (Southern Education Foundation) and Vivian Tseng (William T. Grant Foundation) and was chaired by Michael McPherson (Spencer Foundation).
This session was immediately followed by rapid-fire discussions where 10 groups of approximately 10 AERA leaders each, including AERA Council members and staff, focused on identifying the audiences for education research, how audiences can shape the research that is done, the accountability of researchers for sound communication and dissemination to users, and ways that AERA could facilitate access to research by policy and practice communities.
Substantive topics of international importance were also on the cross-talk agenda, with presenters drawn from among the AERA leadership at the meeting. One panel took up the issue of “Education and Inequality of Life Chances Worldwide.”
CCM participants Alfredo J. Artiles (Arizona State University), AERA President-Elect Jeannie Oakes (University of California, Los Angeles), Tanya L. M. Samu (University of Auckland), and William H. Schmidt (Michigan State University) examined the complex relationship between education and opportunity in different cultures, including the paradoxical role that education sometimes plays in driving inequality.
A second panel addressed “Youth Identities and Cultures—Implications for Education Policy and Research,” another salient topic. A. Wade Boykin (Howard University), Dorothy L. Espelage (University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign), Michelle Fine (The Graduate Center, CUNY), and Elizabeth Birr Moje (University of Michigan) examined issues of youth identity in the context of bullying prevention, the inclusion of youth voices in research, and persistent achievement gaps between White and minority students.
CCM is a meeting with multiple goals, and it accomplishes much more than committee work. AERA leaders wrapped up the meeting with a collective sense of the strengths of and opportunities for the field and the important role of AERA in advancing the discipline and profession.