Dear Division A Colleagues,
Division A of the American Educational Research Association (AERA) is accepting nominations for three awards to be presented at the Division A Business Meeting at the 2027 Annual Meeting in Toronto, Canada, April 14th-April 18th, 2027.
Nominees must be Division A members. All nominations are due by December 18th, 2026. Nomination packages should be submitted to the Division A email address: AERADivisionALead@gmail.com, with the name of the award in the subject line. Please direct any questions to the Division A email address.
The awards are as follows:
Outstanding Dissertation Award. This award will recognize outstanding dissertation research appropriate to the field, including the leadership, organization, and administration of schools, as well as the preparation of educational leaders. Studies embracing both traditional and alternative conceptualizations and methodologies are welcomed. The honoree will receive a plaque and a $500honorarium.
ELIGIBILITY: Nominees must be members of AERA Division A at the time of the nomination and have been awarded the Ph.D. or Ed.D. between January 1, 2026 and December 31, 2026. No self-nominations will be accepted.
NOMINATION PROCESS: Nominators must also be members of AERA Division A. Nomination packets must be submitted electronically and include the following:
1. A one-page letter and overview from a member of the dissertation committee that can be sent separately from the other materials. 2. A title sheet showing the dissertation title, awarding institution, members of the dissertation committee, date of completion of the degree, and nominee’s current contact information; and 3. A masked summary of the dissertation written in APA style, not to exceed 7500 words, exclusive of the title page, references, and appendices.
Excellence in Research Award. This award will recognize outstanding contributions to the field of educational administration, organizational theory, or school/district leadership. The honoree will receive a plaque and a $500 honorarium.
ELIGIBILITY: Nominees for this award must be tenured and a member of AERA Division A at the time of the nomination. Contributions may be an accumulation of research with the same focus over time, or a recent project that has made a significant impact on the field’s core knowledge and must have been published in peer-reviewed journals or books. No self- nominations will be accepted.
a) Letter of nomination explaining why the nominee is qualified to be recognized for the award. b) Current curriculum vita of the nominee. c) Maximum of three (3) copies of relevant research publications discussed in the nomination letter; and d) Two letters of support from other individuals familiar with the nominee’s work.
Emerging Scholar Award. This award will recognize an early career (pre-tenure) scholar within his/her first seven years after the award of the doctorate or in the first five years of a tenure-track position AND who has made outstanding research contributions to the field of leadership, administration, or organizational theory. The honoree will receive a plaque and a $500 honorarium.
ELIGIBILITY: Eligible nominees must be members of AERA Division A at the time of the nomination. No self-nominations will be accepted.
NOMINATION PROCESS: Nominators must also be members of AERA Division A and must submit evidence of the nominee’s outstanding contributions to research. Nomination packets must be submitted electronically and include the following:
a) Letter of nomination explaining why the nominee is qualified to be recognized for the award. b) Two letters of support from individuals familiar with the nominee’s work. c) A current curriculum vitae of the nominee. d) and no more than three (3) examples of published work with emphasis on the peer-reviewed nature ofthe publication, including the way publishers seek outside expertise in the publication decision.
AERA Division A Newsletter: Summer 2026
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It’s time to renew your AERA membership for 2027.
Your membership keeps you connected to the Division and Special Interest Group (SIG) communities where many members say they experience AERA most directly. It also supports AERA’s journals and career resources. And it gives you access to the broader AERA network, including the 2027 Annual Meeting.
Use the following link to view the most recent edition of the Division A Newsletter
As you renew your AERA membership this winter, do not forget about the Learning and Teaching in Educational Leadership SIG. Membership is only $10. Already a member of other leadership SIGS? That’s great! Think about how joining LTEL as well could broaden your reach!
Interested in learning more about LTEL? Join us at the LTEL UCEA Social Hour on Friday, November 20 at 4pm.
Drs. Margaret Thornton, Sofia Ferreyro-Mazieres, Doug McDougall, and Elizabeth Huffaker are presenting a new Article Collection, "Reforming the Math Hierarchy: Policy, Practice, and the Politics of Equity in Access and Pathways". This Collection is now live in Cogent Education. The deadline to submit is 2 April 2027. You can find out more by reaching out to Kristen.Brida@taylorandfrancis.com or visiting this link.
The AERA Fellows Program honors education researchers with substantial research accomplishments, conveys the Association’s commitment to excellence in research, and enables the next generation of emerging scholars to appreciate the value of sustained achievements in research and the breadth of scholarship worthy of recognition. The program is intended to recognize excellence in research and be inclusive of the scholarship that constitutes and enriches education research as an interdisciplinary field. Please read the Call for Nominations for 2027 AERA Fellow.
Leading & Managing (L&M) welcomes submissions for a special issue titled Robust Leadership to Support Multilingual Learners. To ensure the academic growth of multilingual learners in schools, educational leaders need to create school environments that are responsive to the multifaceted needs of this group. As such, preparing leaders to serve multilingual learners, creating an organizational culture for multilingual learners, developing teacher capacity, and connecting with multilingual communities warrant examination as conduits for robust multilingual leadership.
Abstracts of up to 500 words should be submitted by December 4, 2026, to special issue co-editors Marjorie Ceballos (marjorie.ceballos@ucf.edu) and Christina Torres (christina.torres@ucf.edu), with copies to Dorothy Andrews (Dorothy.Andrews@unisq.edu.au) and kbixler@fgcu.edu.
Professor Chris Brown is the author of Leading for a Fragmented World: School Leadership as Epistemic Stewardship, the first Element published in Cambridge University Press’s Cambridge Elements in Educational Leadership series. The full book is available for free download through November 9, 2026, at:
https://www.cambridge.org/core/elements/leading-for-a-fragmented-world/8BA6C5BCB7788AEC932C4D02D7146007#element
The following is the book’s abstract: Democratic societies are experiencing growing epistemic strain. Misinformation, polarization, and fragmented information environments are weakening shared standards of evidence and the capacity for collective reasoning. Education policy has often responded by emphasizing individual competencies such as critical thinking and media literacy. While important, this Element argues that such approaches are insufficient unless they are embedded within institutional conditions that allow ideas to be examined, contested, and translated into collective action. The Element introduces democratic intelligence: the collective capacity of institutions and societies to reason, learn, and act effectively under conditions of uncertainty and difference. It advances epistemic stewardship as a core responsibility of school leadership, focusing on the deliberate design of organizational conditions that enable engagement with trustworthy knowledge and structured professional dialogue. Across four sections, the Element shows how leaders can strengthen knowledge engagement, organize dialogue across difference, and translate collective reasoning into coordinated action and sustained school improvement.
If you are planning on attending the UCEA Annual Convention in Pittsburgh, PA from November 18-21, there are still rooms available at the Omni William Penn Hotel.
The hotel is a seven-minute walk to the David L. Lawrence Convention Center and boasts an opulent lobby which is perfect for networking with fellow Convention attendees.
Click here to make your reservation!
The UCEA GSC is hosting another webinar in preparation for the UCEA 2026 Graduate Student Summit.
UCEA 2026 Graduate Student Summit Preparation Webinar: Prepare, Practice, Present!
Please join us on November 10th at 7:30 pm EST for an interactive preparation session designed to help graduate students strengthen their presentation skills and feel more confident sharing their work! Registration is required: bit.ly/UCEA26-GSS-Prep
The Video Journal of Education (VJE) is looking for reviewers for our first issue, coming out this upcoming June!
VJE is a new venue for video publishing in education research and scholarship, with a mission to reach broad audiences with accessible and well constructed conceptual, critical and creative work in education research.
We need reviewers who are willing to review video articles for our first issue and help us create a new pathway for education researchers interested in using video to publish their work.
Reviewers will:
Watch and take notes for constructive feedback on a 6-15 minute video article.
Join a Zoom call with the author, other reviewers and editors of VJE to share and discuss their feedback.
Edit a summarized version of their remarks provided by the VJE editorial team for publication as an “open review” on the VJE site accompanying the final video article. Authors will have a chance to respond to these open reviews in a similar fashion, with their responses also published on the site.
Timeline:
The article to be reviewed will be shared by mid December, 2026.
The rough cut screening will take place between late January and the mid February, 2027.
Final “open review” edited text will be due by late March, 2027.
If you’re willing to review, would you please let us know by taking about two minutes to fill out this interest form by Nov 5, 2026?
Please reach out to vidjournal@tc.columbia.edu with any questions.
Thanks for considering and best,
Joe Riina-Ferrie, Charles Lang & Lalitha Vasudevan Video Journal of Education Editors
We are pleased to share this call for proposals for a special issue focused on critically examining how recent federal administrative actions - particularly those targeting public education, immigration, and civil rights protections - have directly and indirectly harmed students with disabilities, their families, and their communities at the intersection of other salient identities such as race, gender, and economic vulnerability.
Exceptional Children invites submissions for a special issue titled “Intersectional Disability, Displacement, and Federal Retrenchment: Reckoning with Harm and Reimagining Disability Educational Justice," guest edited by Dr. Cristina Santamaría Graff and Dr. Alexandra Aylward.
The Special Issue seeks scholarship that illuminates the effects of recent federal administrative actions across the educational ecosystem as well as the powerful forms of resistance to oppression including counter-movements, solidarities, and coalition-building that are emerging in response to intensified federal actions targeting disabled communities with intersecting identities.
Intended for policymakers, educators, families, and interdisciplinary scholars, this issue welcomes a range of submissions— including original research articles, case studies, conceptual papers, historical, or theoretical reflections—that reimagine disability justice in education. Authors should follow Exceptional Children submission guidelines and contribute to advancing equity and civil rights for students with disabilities in the current sociopolitical climate.
New Extended Deadline: January 17, 2027
Are you an early-career faculty member looking for support on your academic journey? Join us at the UCEA 2026 Annual Convention in Pittsburgh for the Early Career Faculty Success Mentoring Workshop.
This interactive session focuses on navigating the administrative and political landscapes of tenure and promotion. Following a short presentation on key best practices, participants will split into small breakout groups to discuss research, teaching, and service with experienced mentors.
Registration: Early Career Success at UCEA 2026
Date & Time: Thursday, November 19 | 10:00 AM – 11:50 AM
Location: David L. Lawrence Convention Center (Level 4, Room 409)
Facilitators: Anjalé Welton, University of Wisconsin - Madison, Linda C. Tillman, University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill
Mentors:
AERA Open invites submissions for a special topic collection on “Extending Educator Diversity: Impacts, Barriers, and Strategies for Change Across the Workforce.” The collection welcomes scholarship examining educator diversity, barriers to recruitment and retention, the experiences of historically marginalized educators, and policies and practices designed to strengthen diversity across the educator workforce. We particularly encourage interdisciplinary and innovative work that expands how we understand educator diversity across roles, career stages, and contexts.
Abstracts of up to 500 words are due February 1, 2027. Please share this opportunity with colleagues who may be interested.
View the full call for abstracts.
Research Topic: Leading Inquiry-Focused Continuous Improvement
Topic Editors:
Due dates have been extended:
The USC Race and Equity Center is hosting an equity book talk event next month (November 17) on Zoom with authors Zak Foster and Lauren Irwin to discuss their book Disrupting White Noise: Challenging Beliefs about Race on Campus. The PDF attached includes a registration link and promo code to purchase the book.
We are pleased to introduce the Journal of Applied Educational Research and Evaluation (JAERE), a newly launched scholarly journal dedicated to advancing rigorous interdisciplinary scholarship that advances educational research, informs practice, and contributes to policy development across diverse educational contexts.
We invite scholars, researchers, evaluators, and practitioners to engage with the journal by submitting scholarship for publication and serving as peer reviewers.
Call for Manuscripts
Journal of Applied Educational Research and Evaluation (JAERE) welcomes original scholarly manuscripts that contribute to educational research, evaluation, policy, and practice. We encourage submissions representing diverse educational contexts, populations, theoretical perspectives, and methodological approaches, including quantitative, qualitative, and mixed methods research.
As an open-access journal, JAERE is committed to making high-quality scholarship accessible to researchers, educators, practitioners, policymakers, and other members of the educational community.
We invite you to consider JAERE as a publication venue for your current and future scholarship and to share the journal with colleagues whose work aligns with its scope.
Become a Peer Reviewer
As we build the journal and its scholarly community, we are also expanding our pool of peer reviewers. We welcome scholars and professionals with demonstrated research or professional expertise relevant to the journal's scope and experience conducting, reviewing, or evaluating educational research.
Peer reviewers are selected based on the alignment of their substantive and methodological expertise with the manuscript under consideration. In identifying reviewers, the editorial team considers relevant scholarly or professional expertise, methodological knowledge, research and publication experience, and, when applicable, prior peer-review experience. Reviewers must also be independent of the authors, disclose any potential conflicts of interest, and maintain the confidentiality of manuscripts and the peer-review process.
If you are interested in joining our peer reviewer pool, please provide the following:
Educating in Dangerous Times: A Call to Re-envision Public School in America , a new edited volume that published by Beacon Press August 2026, aims to seed public conversations about the K-12 schools our students need in a moment characterized by the erosion of civil rights, book bans, and attacks on immigrants and LGBTQ+ communities. The co-editors of the book, George Theoharis and John Rogers, feature prominent educational leadership scholars as chapter authors (as well as a host of other distinguished education scholars). These include: Michelle Young, Judy Alston, Muhammad Khalifa, Julian Vasquez Heilig, Vincent Cho, Carrie Sampson, Mollie McQuillan, and Kevin Henry. The chapter authors name the threats facing public education, imagine more equitable, inclusive, and democratic schools, and help us chart a path to get there. The intent of the book is to galvanize attention on the dangers facing our students and our schools and initiate public conversations around the question: How should we reenvision public schools and collectively create the public schools we need? Available now from bookstores everywhere. Order from Beacon and use the code BE30 for 30% off.
The organizing committee for the International Congress for School Effectiveness and Improvement (ICSEI) 2027 invites you to submit proposals for the annual conference.
ICSEI 2027 will take place in Banff, Alberta, Canada, from January 4–8, 2027, and is being hosted by the University of Calgary. The Congress theme is: Be Well, Learn Well: Strengthening Belonging, Well-Being, and Academic Growth. We aim to bring together researchers, practitioners, policymakers, graduate students, and educational leaders from around the world to explore questions related to educational improvement, wellbeing, belonging, leadership, equity, and system change.
The proposal process for ICSEI is intentionally designed to be relatively accessible and straightforward. Proposal submissions are brief (approximately 500 words maximum). Proposals are still being accepted.
The AERA Division A Newsletter team is seeking applications for two Co-Associate Editors. Co-Associate Editors serve a total of two years on the Newsletter team, beginning their first year under the guidance of the current Co-Editors and then taking on the Co-Editor role in their second year. This two-year term begins April 2026 and ends July 2028. Responsibilities include gathering and authoring content, interfacing with other Division A and Executive Committee members, and meeting monthly during the academic year as an editorial team. This is an excellent opportunity for early career and tenure-track academics to build their networks and understandings of AERA governance. Interested applicants should complete the following application by March 8, 2026. For any questions, please contact the current Co-Editors, Alison Wilson (aswilso6@central.uh.edu) and Meagan Richard (meagan.richard@umb.edu).