The American Educational Research Association (AERA) is seeking volunteers to serve as peer reviewers for submissions for the 2025 AERA Annual Meeting. A quality peer review system is the bedrock for an exceptional annual meeting, and thus we encourage persons with depth of research expertise to volunteer to review and respond to this call.

Background

Peer review panels are launched well in advance of the opening of the submission process. The goal is to enable program chairs to constitute well-qualified and inclusive panels and to notify reviewers well in advance that they are making a commitment to review submissions. Units (divisions, sections of divisions, SIGs, and committees) establish expert reviewer panels to evaluate a total of approximately 10 to 20 paper or session submissions per person depending on the number of submissions and the unit preference. 

Program chairs will be selecting a roster of reviewers from volunteers or invited individuals to serve on these expert review panels. The process will begin with volunteers signing up to be reviewers beginning January 30, with the review panels to be constituted by June. Review panels will be designed to reflect the breadth of expertise needed by that unit, with a process that is transparent and provides for greater consistency in the quality of reviewing. The review panel selection procedure also includes review of the roster of reviewers by a unit head (division program chair/division vice president, SIG chair) before it is finalized. Units with small numbers of members and/or submissions have the option to coordinate an integrated review process by constituting a shared review panel with another unit building upon reviewers with complementary expertise. Such collaboration will avert the problem of conflicts of interest or an insufficient number of reviewers. 

Serving on a review panel is a selective process, is intended to be considered an honor, and will be publicized to the AERA community as a form of important service to the Association and the field. Reviewers will be publicly acknowledged, also adding to the transparency of the process and the accountability of each submission unit for ensuring that review panels reflect the criteria for selection.

Volunteer for Service

When? Volunteer to serve as a peer reviewer through the 2025 Annual Meeting online program portal. The system will be open January 30-April 29, 2024, to register as a volunteer reviewer.

How? Individuals interested in being considered as peer reviewers are encouraged to volunteer for specific units (divisions, SIGs, or committees) through the AERA online program portal. Go to www.aera.netand log in with your username and password. After you login, click ‘My AERA’ at the top of the page, scroll down to the 2025 Annual Meeting and click ‘Online Program Portal – Volunteer to Be a Reviewer’. Volunteers who are selected by program chairs to serve on review panels will receive an invitation to review by May 31, 2024.

Where? Individuals may volunteer to serve as a peer reviewer for more than one unit. Be sure to select the Special and Inclusive Education Research SIG (#113) if you are interested in reviewing for our SIG! If selected to serve on a review panel, each reviewer will typically be asked to review a minimum of 10 submissions and up to 20 for units that receive a large number of submissions. For units that receive a small number of submissions, reviewers may be asked to review fewer submissions. Reviewers can complete a maximum of 40 reviews. Reviews will take place during a 3-week period from August 9-30. Interested researchers should volunteer only if available during the reviewing time span and able to undertake a set of reviews. Please keep this in mind as you consider volunteering your service and contribution.

Who? Any AERA member or non-member may volunteer for consideration as a peer reviewer. Peer reviewers need to have appropriate substantive background and expertise as noted below in the Panel Reviewer Selection Criteria section. During the volunteer reviewer registration process, please answer the questions relevant to your background and experience.

Panel Reviewer Selection Criteria

Review panels will be constituted to be inclusive of well-qualified researchers knowledgeable across the span of research topics, methods, and modes of inquiry likely to be considered by a submission unit. The criteria for invited panel reviewers include such considerations as:

(a) experience in some form of peer reviewing, 

(b) service on other professional review panels, 

(c) knowledge of the field, 

(d) scholarly productivity or roles that require research expertise, 

(e) knowledge of the emerging literature, and 

(f) broad knowledge of a range of researchers and research specialties in an area. 

Graduate students may be invited to serve as panel reviewers. Each submission will be reviewed by at least three non-student reviewers and may be reviewed by a graduate student or students serving as additional reviewers. All reviews, including graduate student reviews, will be provided to submitters, although graduate student review scores are not included in the scoring calculations. When graduate students are serving as panel reviewers, the unit program chair is encouraged to incorporate a plan to provide feedback and mentoring to graduate students to enrich the educational value of this experience. 

Accepting an Invitation to Serve on a Peer Review Panel

For the 2025 Annual Meeting, volunteers selected to serve on review panels will receive an invitation no later than May 31, 2024, for each unit selected. Volunteers must accept or decline the invitation no later than June 7. Reviewers will be expected to review submissions during a 3-week period from August 9-30. The approximate number of submissions to be evaluated by each reviewer will be specified in the invitation to serve. Those accepting invitations from more than one unit should anticipate reviewing from 10 to 20 submissions per unit depending on the unit. Peer review panels are non-collaborative panels and reviewers will be able to anonymously view other reviews for the same submission at the conclusion of the review process after a final accept or reject decision has been made on each proposal.

Review Procedure

Reviewers will use the criteria identified in the Call for Submissions to evaluate paper and session submissions. Blind review is required for paper and session submissions. 

Reviewers must adhere to the AERA conflicts of interest policy (adopted January 2008) and recuse themselves from consideration of a submission where necessary. Reviewers also are required to adhere to confidentiality rules regarding the consideration of submissions.

Please take the time to sign up now so that program chairs can potentially turn to you to review and help increase the quality of the meeting. Don't forget to sign up to review for the SIER SIG (#113)! 

Call for Proposals:

AERA Special and Inclusive Education Research

Special Interest Group (SIER SIG)

Deadline July 31, 2023 at 11:59 PM PDT

The SIER SIG of the American Educational Research Association (AERA) invites paper, symposium, roundtable, and/or poster proposal submissions for the 2024 annual meeting.

AERA Annual Meeting

Thursday, April 11–Sunday, April 14, 2023 (Place-based in Philadelphia)

Dismantling Racial Injustice and Constructing Educational Possibilities: A Call to Action

This theme is of significant importance for special and inclusive education researchers as our field has made a substantial impact on increasing educational opportunities and outcomes for people with disabilities. Yet, more attention is needed in advancing educational equity by dismantling racial injustices that continue to negatively impact multiply marginalized individuals.  “This year’s theme asks researchers, practitioners, and policy makers to imagine boldly what education spaces free of racial injustice can look like. How do we think about our work, develop theories of action, engage in modes of inquiry, and implement ideas for professional practice when racial injustice no longer exists? This year’s theme asks us to look back, but to imagine forward. In our current moment, when the disruption of truth, attacks on race theories, banning of books, and erasure of histories have become commonplace, how can our work take an intersectional approach of eradicating racism, and all other forms of oppression? Many of the current constructs of racial categories, gendered classifications, and social class designations are created by pseudoscientific frameworks that foster denigrating and harmful depictions of various peoples and groups. Research, in many ways, has been complicit in concretizing racial injustice and oppression. Now is the time for research to be a solution in dismantling racial injustice and constructing educational possibilities.” (2024 AERA Presidential Program Theme). 

Researchers are invited to submit proposals to the SIER SIG that address educational inequities in special education and inclusive education, including those that “imagine boldly what education spaces free of racial injustice can look like” (2024 AERA Presidential Program Theme), as well as in preparing special and inclusive educators for work in racially, ethnically, culturally, and linguistically diverse P–12 schools and postsecondary institutions. 

As members of the SIER SIG, we work to promote the study and dissemination of topics, research-based practices, and research methodologies related to access and inclusion of people with disabilities and their families, advancing equitable education opportunities, independence and economic self-sufficiency throughout the lifespan. We recognize the need for research that represents people across disability labels, race, socio-economic status, ethnicity, gender, language, and other areas of diversity and identity. We also recognize the need for conferences, such as AERA, that pull together ideas, research, and experiences that move towards the reimagining and creation of systems that view opportunity and education as a human right.  

As such, we look for proposals that:

• Empirically examine how special and inclusive education are used as a tool for both empowerment and dis-empowerment.
• Promote access to equitable and inclusive education opportunities, for all individuals with disabilities including those with extensive support needs.
• Explore areas of educational research of interest to special and general educators, including teaching strategies, learning strategies, instructional practices and barriers to these strategies and practices.
• Investigate intersections of disability and other identities, such as race/ethnicity, gender, class, and sexuality.
• Identify social structures, policies, funding structures, and approaches to schooling essential for equity.
• Examine the lived experiences of those within the field of special education, including students, teachers, families, administrators, and other related allies.
• Utilize systems-based and/or multi-level approaches to advancing equity for students with disabilities.
• Focus on research to increase our impact, such as advocacy, academic instruction including literacy, mathematics, science, and social studies, specially designed instruction, communication, community living, employment, executive functioning, higher education, identity, inclusion, independence, mental health, policy, positive behavior supports, postsecondary education opportunities, public understanding, and social supports.
• Identify potential instructional practices, leadership, policies, and research that have promise for improving social, academic, employment, and community opportunities and outcomes with a special emphasis on removing barriers faced by students of color with disabilities.
• Utilize meta-analyses and research syntheses to identify emerging and evidence-based research.
• Use critical quantitative, qualitative, and mixed methods to advance equity. 
• Share new methods to elicit qualitative voices, such as online multimodal tools.
• Consider quality indicators including those related to improved academic and social outcomes, long-term outcomes, implementation, generalization and maintenance.
• Contextualize autism from a neurodiversity perspective, and remove socially constructed obstacles to achieving quality of life aspirations.
• Take an asset focused or strengths-based approach to providing universally designed supports.
• Foster self-awareness, self-efficacy, and self-esteem.
• Represent alternative modes of research dissemination including blog posts, poetry, data-rich opinion essays, social media commentaries, music, short films, YouTube clips, and newspaper articles (2023 AERA Presidential Program Theme). 

We also encourage you to submit symposium, paper, roundtable, and/or poster proposals that fit our overall SIER SIG purpose for the 2024 AERA Annual Meeting. To learn more please visit our website at: https://www.aera.net/SIG113/Special-Education-Research-SIG-113

For more information regarding the 2024 AERA Annual Meeting program and the proposal submission process please visit the link: https://www.aera.net/Events-Meetings/Annual-Meeting/2024-Annual-Meeting-Presidential-Program-Theme

Katie McCabe, PhD

Program Chair, AERA Special and Inclusive Education Research SIG
Assistant Professor of Exceptional Children
Exceptional Education Department - Buffalo State
Email: mccabekm@buffalostate.edu