As AERJ completes its 50^th year, its sponsoring organization, founded in 1916, prepares to celebrate its Centennial.  To mark this event and a century that saw AERA grow from a founding group of eight education directors to a flourishing membership of approximately 25,000, AERJ will publish a special Centennial issue.  The goal of this issue is to present leading-edge, visionary research on critical education issues that substantively moves the field – and AERA – into the “next 100 years.” As the journal transitions from two sections to an integrated format, we are especially interested in interdisciplinary scholarship that effectively brings together the topical, conceptual, and methodological approaches historically associated with SIA and TLHD.  We intend the Centennial issue to be broadly inclusive, addressing a wide variety of topics, issues, and methodological approaches. Thus, AERJ will embrace the full spectrum of areas of inquiry that constitute the field of education research, and that advance understanding of education and learning processes or contribute to new theoretical, policy, or methodological developments. 

In the spirit of inclusivity, we plan to publish a greater number of articles in the Centennial issue than is typical for regular issues.  Therefore, manuscripts should be no more than 7500-8000 words, including references, endnotes, tables, and figures.  To be considered for this special issue, authors should submit a 750-1000-word abstract plus references by February 20, 2015.  (Please do not submit longer abstracts or papers.) Abstracts should outline the topic/issue/problem to be addressed, the conceptual framework(s) and methodology(ies) to be employed, particulars of the data and research to be examined, significance to the field, and relevance to AERA’s Centennial and the focus of this Call. Those invited to submit manuscripts will be expected to do so by May 1, 2015.  All manuscripts will be subject to AERJ’s usual procedure of blind peer review; acceptance in the Centennial issue is contingent on the outcome of this review.  Final manuscripts will be due September 1, 2015, with a planned publication date of February, 2016.

Proposals should be submitted to both [email protected] and [email protected], with the subject heading clearly marked: “Centennial Proposal/Author’s Last Name/3-4-word Topic Heading.” Please direct inquiries to both email addresses above. We look forward to receiving your proposals and to inaugurating AERA’s next century with you.