Click the name to jump to each fellow's citation of accomplishment and introductory video.
Stephanie Al Otaiba, Southern Methodist University
Dr. Stephanie Al Otaiba is a leading scholar on literacy outcomes for children, student response to interventions, and teacher training methods. Conducting her research in high-needs elementary schools, she has made pioneering contributions to our understanding of literacy through her work with students with disabilities. A highly prolific researcher, Dr. Al Otaiba has authored and co-authored over 100 articles and has contributed over 30 handbook and text chapters. Her research on Response to Intervention systems demonstrated that struggling students benefit from receiving serious intervention sooner, and is widely cited in the field of reading development. Dr. Al Otaiba serves on the executive board of the International Dyslexia Association, where she helped develop new training standards for practitioners who serve children with dyslexia. She has also served as president of the Council for Exceptional Children’s Division for Learning Disabilities, and is currently editor-in-chief of the Journal of Learning Disabilities. Dr. Al Otaiba is a groundbreaking scholar and advocate; her contributions are guiding the future of scholarship in special education and literacy.
W. Holmes Finch, Ball State University
Dr. W. Holmes Finch's seminal research in quantitative methodology has advanced the field of educational measurement on the national and international levels. His work on detecting differential item functioning is crucial for ensuring that key constructs, such as reading and math achievement, are measured fairly across demographic groups. He is recognized as an international leader in numerous areas of quantitative methodology, including psychometrics, multilevel modeling, and latent variable modeling. An author of nine influential books, Dr. Finch has translated his educational measurement concepts to a wide audience of researchers. He is a recipient of the Early Career Award from the American Psychological Association’s Division 5 and the Outstanding Research Award from Ball State University, serves as editor-in-chief of the journal Methods in Psychology, and has chaired multiple AERA special interest groups. Grounded in a commitment to accessibility and interdisciplinary collaboration, Dr. Finch’s work is influential across nearly every discipline in the realm of education research.
Robert E. Floden, Michigan State University
Dr. Robert E. Floden is a national leader in teacher education and evaluation, and a philosopher with diverse methodological understandings and skill sets. His work demonstrates deep knowledge of empirical research on teacher preparation, education research methodologies, and education policy. The author or co-author of over 100 articles and book chapters and collaborator on grants totaling over $87 million, Dr. Floden has advanced scholarly collaboration through his extensive contributions to team projects and his building and enabling of research collectives. He has led Michigan State University’s College of Education as dean for the past four years, maintaining its 25-year ranking as a top teacher education program in the United States—and recently, among the top ten in the world, according to Times Higher Education. His philosophical background inspires him to persistently ask readers to reconsider their assumptions and to think critically about what is regarded as conventional wisdom. At the cutting edge of the education field, Dr. Floden’s research provides pathbreaking insights for teacher educators, researchers, and policy makers.
Jennifer M. Gore, University of Newcastle
Dr. Jennifer M. Gore is one of Australia’s most influential researchers in teacher socialization and feminist pedagogy. A concern for educational equity underpins her work, as well as a commitment to influencing policy and practice to improve student and teacher outcomes. Her book The Struggle for Pedagogies was the first comprehensive analysis of radical pedagogy discourses. It revolutionized the field of critical feminist pedagogy by contending that its current styles of argument were at odds with what the pedagogy argued for; it has been cited over 1,600 times. She is also widely known for her scholarship on Quality Teaching Rounds, a collaborative approach to professional development that has been awarded over $16 million in funding. She is a recipient of the 2016 Radford Prize, the highest honor bestowed by the Australian Association for Research in Education. Dr. Gore’s work has had far-reaching international impact, improving the lives of teachers and students and influencing the essential nature of practice in teaching and professional development.
Edmund 'Ted' Hamann, University of Nebraska, Lincoln
Dr. Edmund 'Ted' Hamann is a pioneering expert in education policy, school reform, English learner education, and educational anthropology. He is widely known for his intellectual leadership in two areas of scholarship: the educational ramifications for Mexican immigrants who settle in “new” geographic areas of the United States, known as the “New Latino Diaspora”; and the transmigration of Mexican children schooled in the United States whose families return to Mexico. Comprising 12 books, presentations around the world, and over 70 journal articles and book chapters, Dr. Hamann’s work has brought global attention to the educational circumstances and inequities of transnational students. In Mexico, the federal education ministry disseminated 20,000 copies of volumes co-authored by Dr. Hamann to education ministries and schools across the country. He currently serves as president of the American Anthropological Association’s Council on Anthropology and Education. His work has been instrumental in transforming inequities for immigrant and transnationally mobile students, and is a model for future research on children’s movement in an age of globalization.
Kathryn Hirsh-Pasek, Temple University
Dr. Kathryn Hirsh-Pasek has made critical contributions to research on language development, spatial learning, children’s use of media, and informal learning. A Brookings Institution senior scholar, she is the creator of three popular methods that assess what infants and young children know about language, as well as the widely used term, “playful learning.” Her work on conversational turns has transformed the field of language development, shifting emphasis from the quantity of language that children hear to the quality of the conversations. She is a passionate champion of children’s need to engage in playful learning, and numerous leading academic and education development organizations, such as Sesame Street, have referred to her work in promoting play for children. Her current Playful Learning Landscapes project, demonstrating the power of infusing learning into public spaces, is bringing interactive learning installations to cities all over the world. Dr. Hirsh-Pasek’s cutting-edge work has permeated mainstream culture and has made the science of learning relevant and accessible to both families and practitioners.
Nancy C. Jordan, University of Delaware
Dr. Nancy C. Jordan is a widely recognized authority in the fields of mathematical cognition, learning disabilities, and mathematics education. A Google Classic Award winner for top-cited paper in Early Childhood Education, she conducts cutting-edge research on interventions that improve mathematics achievement, with a special focus on children with learning disabilities and children from low-income communities. Dr. Jordan was the first to describe unique difficulties faced by students struggling across both mathematics and reading, and her findings became a critical topic in the field of learning disabilities. As a principal investigator across multiple large research grants from the Institute of Education Sciences and the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, she has published widely disseminated methods of improving fractions performance and number sense among struggling students. Dr. Jordan chairs the governing board of the international Mathematical Cognition and Learning Society, and serves on numerous editorial boards and expert panels. Her work has been instrumental to the design of new methods that support young learners’ mathematical development.
Panayiota Kendeou, University of Minnesota
Dr. Panayiota Kendeou conducts groundbreaking research on the cognitive processes of reading comprehension. She develops theoretical models about how students acquire knowledge during reading, a critical emerging area of research, and translates them into innovative educational technology that has been implemented in selected school districts and charter schools, with a plan for scale-up across the United States. Dr. Kendeou is the upcoming senior editor of the Journal of Educational Psychology, one of the top journals in education research. Her research has been cited over 6,000 times, and she is the winner of an Early Career Impact Award from the Federation of Associations in Behavior and Brain Sciences. Published in the top-tier journals of education and psychology, her scholarship on inference making, the Knowledge Revision Components framework, and how readers absorb information that conflicts with their preexisting knowledge have become authoritative texts in the field of reading research. Dr. Kendeou’s work advances our theoretical understanding of how reading comprehension operates, and redefines how reading should be taught in schools.
Charles A. MacArthur, University of Delaware
Dr. Charles A. MacArthur is a leading scholar on writing development and instruction. His research centers around technology that supports reading and writing, effective instruction in elementary and secondary grades, and adult and postsecondary literacy. Dr. MacArthur has authored 10 books and over 100 articles, and has been awarded 20 federal grants to support his research. The breadth of his scholarship is extensive, from working with students with learning disabilities across age ranges to conducting studies on modern digital writing technology as well as traditional manual modes of writing. He has designed instructional practices that provide teachers with usable tools, and his findings and advocacy have informed state and national policy making. Dr. MacArthur has served on 10 U.S. Department of Education panels. He is one of a select group of American writing researchers with strong international influence. His scholarship has aided children and young adults in need of instructional support and is integral to our understanding of how students learn to write.
Janelle T. Scott, University of California, Berkeley
Dr. Janelle T. Scott's research sheds a crucial light on the process and politics of privatization and deregulation in public education. Instead of focusing exclusively on achievement outcomes of recent reform movements, Dr. Scott analyzes the political factors and private interests driving these reforms. Her conceptual frameworks combine empirical analysis with cogent racial critiques of U.S. education policy, and her groundbreaking work on how politically polarized think tanks disseminate information emphasizes to the education research community the importance of sharing its findings with a wider audience. She has received funding from highly selective organizations such as the Spencer Foundation and the William T. Grant Foundation to support her work. In addition to her research, Dr. Scott has made important contributions to AERA through her work as a member of the Journal Publications Committee, as program co-chair for the 2019 Annual Meeting, and as vice president of Division L. Her research is central to efforts to recenter evidence-based policy recommendations, and highlights what is missing in the current landscape of education policy.
Maria Teresa Tatto, Arizona State University
Dr. Maria Teresa Tatto is an internationally respected expert in the field of comparative education, with a focus on teacher education systems around the world. Her work examines the relationships between educator preparation research, policy, and practice. Dr. Tatto was lead principal investigator in the world’s first comparative international study of educator preparation in mathematics, as well as the lead author on the first major international review of global teacher education evaluation systems. Dr. Tatto has created an authoritative theoretical framework for her field of study and authored over a dozen widely influential books. She has served as president of the Comparative and International Education Society, the leading professional society of the field, and has advanced the infrastructure for international collaborations through her leadership at the World Education Research Association. Dr. Tatto has inspired a burst of new comparative studies in teacher education systems and policies. Her work is instrumental to future study of similarities and differences in educator preparation within and across countries.
Mark R. Warren, University of Massachusetts Boston
Dr. Mark R. Warren conducts transformative research on how low-income communities of color can foster leadership in students impacted by educational injustice. The author of Dry Bones Rattling, a classic in the field of community-oriented education research, Dr. Warren shows the critical value of collaborative, bottom-up approaches where parents and students advance social justice in educational policy. Dr. Warren has shaped the field of community-engaged scholarship, co-leading the first national comparative study of community organizing efforts at school reform. He has produced a wide variety of publications and multimedia collaborations with community activist groups, and has organized numerous venues where scholars, organizers, policy makers, and educators can engage in cross-sector discussions. As co-founder of the AERA special interest group Grassroots Community and Youth Organizing for Education Reform, the Urban Research-Based Action Network, and the People’s Think Tank, he has played a key role in building a research-informed movement for educational and social justice. Dr. Warren’s work charts the course for community-engaged scholarship and the next generation of education scholars.
AERA held a virtual celebration to honor the 2020 Fellows on September 1, 2020. View the event program.