November 2023

AERA has announced six recipients of its Dissertation and Research Grant Awards. Grant recipients are studying salient issues in STEM education and policy as well as topics in early childhood development, teacher and student school experiences, and outcomes of education policies and practices. The recipients are selected through and supported by the AERA-NSF Grants Program, which has been funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF) since 1990.

These scholars are using federally funded data sets such as the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study and  the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) as well as the Statewide Longitudinal Data Systems (SLDS) data from Florida, Maryland, and Wisconsin. These studies use rigorous quantitative methods and advanced statistical techniques to examine topics and issues in education research.

Dissertation grants provide advanced graduate students with $27,500 for one year as they write up their research, and early career scholars with up to $35,000 for a two-year study. In addition, scholars participate in professional development and training activities aimed at building their research capacity and encouraging the use of large-scale data in education research.

The NSF has funded the Grants Program for over three decades in support of AERA’s effort to enhance the visibility and use of large-scale designed and administrative data through dissertation and research grants and statistical institutes aimed at building research capacity. Over 600 graduate students and early career scholars have received these grants as they launched their careers and developed their research agendas in STEM education research.

“The AERA-NSF Grants Program provides outstanding training and support for graduate students and early career researchers using large-scale data to study STEM and other education research topics” said Barbara Schneider (Michigan State University), chair of the program’s governing board. “We are eager for these scholars to implement their proposed studies, analyze these data, and generate findings and results that will undoubtedly inform STEM education and STEM policy.”

Current and former AERA-NSF Grants Program grantees recently participated in the AERA-NSF Fall Research Conference (see related Highlights story) and will present their research in poster sessions during the 2024 AERA Annual Meeting in Philadelphia. For more information about the Grants Program visit the AERA website. The next proposal deadline for the Dissertation and Research Grants will be announced in February 2024. The table below lists the Dissertation and Research Grant recipients who have recently commenced their awards.