2026 - 2029 Dr. Roland Sintos Coloma
Division B has been my scholarly home in AERA for over two decades. From my graduate student years through my career as a faculty member and administrator, this Division has accompanied every stage of my academic life. I am honored to have been elected as your Vice President. As I begin my three-year term, I carry with me a deep sense of responsibility and commitment to the members, mission, and future of Division B.
Curriculum studies has always asked the most fundamental and consequential questions in education: What ought to be taught and learned? These questions animate debates in schools, higher education, and public life with urgent and unmistakable force right now. What do we teach about race, gender, sexuality, religion, language, and ability? Who is defined as a proper citizen, and whose bodies and votes are deemed to matter? How do we interpret the past, and who gets to tell those stories? How do we sustain and strengthen democratic institutions, civic participation, and the public good? How do we engage with technology in ways that serve human flourishing rather than diminish it? How do we reckon with environmental degradation and the communities most vulnerable to it? How do we respond to wars and genocides that obliterate human lives, displace families and communities, and demand both moral clarity and pedagogical courage? Whose lives are valued, and which ones become dispensable or collateral damage? These are not peripheral concerns. They are curriculum questions, and they are at the center of crises unfolding in the United States and around the world.
This moment demands both rigorous scholarly engagement and robust public presence from curriculum studies as a field. It also calls us to practice epistemic humility: the US academy does not hold all the answers. Curriculum scholars, practitioners, and advocates from Africa, Asia, Latin America, the Middle East, the Pacific, and beyond have long been theorizing and enacting transformative educational possibilities under conditions of colonialism, authoritarianism, and dispossession. We have as much to learn from them as we have to contribute.
During my term, I am committed to strengthening our membership and infrastructure, expanding professional development and community engagement, cultivating strategic networks across AERA and with other academic allies, and advocating for curriculum, policies, and praxis that advance social and educational justice at home and in solidarity with others around the world. The work ahead is demanding, but Division B has never shied away from difficult questions. I look forward to taking them on with and alongside you.