American Educational Research Association
News Release
Date: April 9, 2006
Media Contact: Helaine Patterson
(202) 223-9485
Print Version of this Release (PDF)
AERA Members Elect Math-Science Education Researcher as President-Elect
WASHINGTON, DC, April 9, 2006 - William F. Tate, Ph.D., a math-science education researcher at Washington University in St. Louis, has been elected president-elect of the American Educational Research Association (AERA), a professional society with approximately 25,000 members in the United States and abroad. His term as president starts at the end of the Annual Meeting next April, after serving as president-elect for a year.
Professor Tate will succeed Eva L. Baker, Ed.D., an educational psychologist who specializes in educational assessment and social methods on the Graduate School of Education and Information Studies faculty at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). Dr. Baker, who also is co-director the National Center for Research on Evaluation, Standards, & Student Testing, assumes the AERA presidency April 11, at the close of the Association's 87th Annual Meeting in San Francisco, California.
At Washington University, Professor Tate is Chair of the Department of Education and the Edward Mallinckrodt Distinguished University Professor in Arts and Sciences. He also holds academic appointments in American Culture Studies and Applied Statistics and Computation, and serves as a participating faculty member in the Audiology and Communication Sciences program at the Washington University Medical School. As his own academic career attests, he supports interdisciplinary scholarship.
He has concentrated his research in two main areas: on mathematics, science, and technology education, specifically in urban settings and on the intersection of urban studies, race and legal thought, and American education.
Professor Tate also serves as the principal investigator and project director for the St. Louis Center for Inquiry in Science Teaching and Learning, one of 10 centers that the National Science Foundation funds in the United States. This center aims to develop an ongoing capacity to produce and diversify science education leaders, researchers and practitioners who apply research with practice to improve science teaching and learning.
Among his professional experiences, Professor Tate has taught at Texas Christian University and the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and has worked in the Dallas, Texas, Public School System as Scholar-in-Residence and Assistant Superintendent of Mathematics and Science.
Professor Tate, who holds a bachelor's degree in economics from Northern Illinois University and a master's degree in mathematical sciences education from the University of Texas at Dallas, received his Ph.D. degree with a focus in mathematics education from the University of Maryland at College Park.
An AERA member since 1991, Professor Tate has been awarded an AERA Early Career Award. He has served as an editor of AERA's peer-reviewed, scholarly quarterly American Educational Research Journal.
This month, he is completing service as Program Chair for AERA's 87th Annual Meeting, scheduled from April 7 to 11 in San Francisco, California. Approximately 14,000 education researchers from 50 countries are attending this meeting, which features 2,400 peer-reviewed sessions and some 4,000 speakers. Expanding on the meeting theme, "Education Research in the Public Interest," he and AERA President Gloria J. Ladson-Billings of the University of Wisconsin-Madison have co-edited a book with the same title that Teachers College Press is releasing this month.
Last year, his monograph entitled "Access and Opportunities to Learn are not Accidents: Engineering Mathematical Progress in your School" was published. His journal articles have focused on the political and social dimensions of mathematics education and science education, as well as urban education.
-AERA-
The American Educational Research Association represents approximately 25,000 members who conduct research and evaluation in education. Founded 90 years ago, the Association strives to advance knowledge about education, to encourage scholarly inquiry related to education, and to promote the use of research to improve education and to serve the public good.