Left to right are Michael, Christine, Ross, Asilia, and Paul at AERA.
EPIC staff members Ross Anderson, Paul Beach, Asilia Franklin, Christine Pitts, and Michael Thier presented at the American Educational Research Association’s (AERA) 2016 Annual Meeting in Washington, DC. They participated in and attended roundtable, poster, and panel presentations for various areas of educational research, and engaged in professional and business development opportunities. They had many opportunities to explore and develop EPIC’s research in the International Baccalaureate, opportunity-to-learn, global citizenship, student creativity and teaching for creativity, research and policy partnerships, and racial inequities in school systems.
The AERA conference provided numerous notable highlights for EPIC presenters. First, Asilia presented her paper Centering Blackness in the Viscous Whiteness of Teacher Education: A Duo Ethnography at the Society for Professors of Education, and Becoming Academic in the Neoliberal Academy to the Qualitative Research special interest group. Michael and Paul’s presentation on their Advanced Placement opportunity-to-learn study received very favorable reviews from Dr. David Berliner (Arizona State University), the former president of AERA. Additionally, Christine and Ross’s Measure of Instruction for Creative Engagement met applause by the grandfather of learning environment research, Dr. Barry Fraser (Curtin University, Australia).
In professional development sessions, Ross gathered resources and tools while learning about enhanced evaluation capacity for implementation science from national leading experts, and both Michael and Ross further developed their understanding of propensity score matching. Paul, Christine, and Ross all attended an ED-Talk presentation about public scholarship that provided valuable insights in terms of understanding how to better sustain college and career readiness in schools and school systems. Additionally, Ross was selected as a Junior Student Representative for Division H—Research, Evaluation, and Assessment in Schools. The team is already looking forward to next year’s conference!
