November  2020

AERA has announced the selection of its third cohort of fellows for the Study of Deeper Learning program. Five fellows were selected from a highly competitive pool of early career scholars who proposed studies using the American Institutes for Research (AIR) Study of Deeper Learning data set (see table below).

The program provides early career scholars with up to $25,000 in research support and affords opportunities to participate in research training activities, small conferences, and the AERA Annual Meeting. Fellows work closely with AIR scientists and other scholars to analyze the Deeper Learning data and to help inform their research.

“We announce this new Deeper Learning cohort with great enthusiasm,” said George L. Wimberly, fellowship principal investigator and AERA director of professional development. “These scholars are poised to examine novel and important education research topics using the Deeper Learning data.”

The AERA Fellowship Program on the Study of Deeper Learning is made possible by a $1.5 million grant from the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation.

Ongoing professional networking and mentoring activities connect fellows with senior scholars and researchers, helping the fellows build their research agendas, create new knowledge, advance manuscripts toward publication, and gain professional socialization to the academic research field. An aim of the program is to create a community of scholars studying the Deeper Learning model and a body of research related to the data.

Each fellow is developing a research project that utilizes this rich data set, which focuses on students, teachers, and schools that implement the Deeper Learning model. These projects address student-centered topics such as understanding students’ socio-emotional learning and development, student achievement, and postsecondary trajectories and outcomes.

Teacher-focused studies examine how teachers integrate their educational values with their classroom and school assessment practices, and how teachers’ mindsets promote students' deeper learning competencies. These studies also identify critical teacher-level practices that influence students’ academic engagement. Many of the studies focus on issues of equity across race, gender, and socioeconomic differences.  The fellows will use rigorous quantitative and qualitative methods to analyze the Deeper Learning data.

The inaugural cohort of the program started in 2016, and a second cohort was named last year.  These fellows are continuing their research projects using the Deeper Learning data and publishing their work in peer-reviewed journals. Over the next few years, AERA will award additional grants to early career scholars to participate in the ongoing program.

AERA will begin accepting proposals for the next cohort in early 2021.  For further information about the Fellowship Program, contact George Wimberly at fellowships@aera.net or 202-238-3200.