Message from SIG C0-Chairs
Message from SIG C0-Chairs
 
Message from SIG Co-Chairs
Alan Amtzis and Mary Klehr
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September 2023

Dear Teacher-as-Researcher SIG Members – Present, Past, and Future,

Thank you so much for visiting the homepage of AERA’s Teacher-as-Researcher Special Interest Group (TAR-SIG) website.  On this page, you will find out more about our unique and, we think, very exciting SIG.  As you may already know, our mission is to feature, encourage and advance the work and too often ignored perspectives of PreK-12 classroom teachers throughout all phases of AERA activities and opportunities. We are the current Co-Chairs of the SIG and we welcome you whether you are yourself a PreK-12 teacher, work closely with them, or support them, as we do.

We are Dr. Alan Amtzis (The College of New Jersey) and Dr. Mary Klehr (Madison WI public schools and UW-Madison), and we are thrilled to be working together in the service of this SIG that we care so much about.  We have each devoted a full generation of our professional (and personal) lives to developing coursework, experiences, and supportive programs that help teachers articulate their unique and critical contributions to educational research. Quite simply, educational research looks and operates differently from inside the classroom. When teachers are at the center of the inquiry process, the questions are different, the methodologies are diverse, the language is distinctive, and the findings are uniquely consequential. We know that reflective research practices that enhance, rather than efface, teachers’ identity and subjectivity, can play a central role in making one a better teacher in ways that only teachers can define for themselves. Maybe this is why the presentation of teachers’ practice-rooted inquiry often feels like a celebration of teachers’ lived experience and knowledge.

Can something that demands such intense personal work also be exuberant? We think so and we hope you do as well. We are both happy to be co-chairing this SIG and we think you’ll find an expression of that in this year’s program at the Annual Meeting in Philadelphia. The deadline for submitting proposals has passed and all of our proposals are out for review.  We offer a special Thank You to anyone who has either submitted a proposal or is reviewing them for the SIG! This year we had 21 Paper and 6 Symposium Sessions submitted to us.  We have not yet heard how many session slots AERA will offer us for the program in Philadelphia, but hope that the opportunities for practitioner contributions at AERA 2024 will be enormously generous.  

In the meantime, we have exciting news about the TAR-SIG Business meeting. Dr Yolanda Sealey-Ruiz (now a full professor at Teachers College in New York) will offer a keynote address.  Her work on “The Archaeology of Self” has strong connections to the processes involved in conducting and applying teacher research.  Dr. Sealey-Ruiz will be joined by two of her Teachers College practitioner-students whose classroom work has been influenced by her teaching and vice versa.  We look forward to seeing you there.

If you have any questions about the Teacher-as-Researcher SIG or think you might like to play an active role in our work, please contact us at amtzis@tcnj.edu   or  maryklehr@gmail.com.

Dr. Alan Amtzis (The College of New Jersey)

Dr. Mary Klehr (Madison WI Public Schools and UW-Madison)