October 2024
Nearly one hundred AERA leaders and representatives convened in Washington, D.C., on October 25–26 for the 2024 Leadership Committee Meeting (LCM). LCM provides an important opportunity for AERA leaders and members of selected committees to gather to address association goals, examine issues of importance to the field, and further AERA’s mission.
“We were thrilled to assemble our leadership again in person for two dynamic days of engagement, strategic planning and cross-cutting communication,” said Felice J. Levine, AERA Executive Director. “LCM is an opportunity for committee members to collaborate on core issues and themes critical to AERA. The meeting also stimulates and inspires participants to engage in ways that benefit the association and the field.”
During the opening session, Levine and AERA President Janelle T. Scott (University of California, Berkeley) welcomed the participants and gave an overview of the two-day program, which included four common tasks designed to provoke ideas about leadership in polarized times, the use of research in resisting efforts to restrict teaching and learning, and the federal role in supporting and sustaining education research.
In the first common task, AERA Co-Program Chair Lorena Llosa (New York University) introduced invited speaker Cynthia Miller-Idriss (American University), who discussed her work with the Polarization and Extremism Research and Innovation Lab (PERIL). Llosa outlined some of the key dilemmas in preventing political and hate-fueled violence and shared PERIL’s evidence and strategies to scale up their work in schools nationally and globally.
Following the second common task, meeting participants traveled to the National Museum of African American History and Culture (NMAAHC) for a special tour of the museum with Leslie T. Fenwick (Howard University), who was the 2024 Brown Lecturer and serves as a member on NMAAHC’s scholarly advisory committee. Attendees visited two special exhibits that allowed them to consider the historic role of Black leadership in divided eras who fought for access and opportunity in education.
The first day concluded with a reception and dinner hosted at the AERA Convening Center at AERA’s headquarters.
Day two of the meeting opened with the third common task that focused on the federal role in supporting rigorous and relevant research. The session featured a panel comprised of the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) Commissioner Peggy Carr, AERA Executive Director Felice Levine, and former AERA Congressional Fellow Walker A. Swain (Learning Policy Institute), moderated by Co-Program Chair Catherine DiMartino (St. John’s University).
The final common task focused on the research response to bans on teaching, learning, and racial diversity. The panel experts for this session included Lori Patton Davis (University of California, Los Angeles), Theodorea R. Berry (Montclair State University), Adrienne D. Dixson (Pennsylvania State University), and Erica Frankenberg (Pennsylvania State University). AERA Co-Program Chair Huriya Jabbar (University of Southern California) served as moderator.
The meeting featured special guests Matthew Soldner, Acting Director of the Institute of Education Sciences (IES) and Commissioner of the National Center for Education Evaluation and Regional Assistance, and Carr, who also joined the Government Relations Committee and Research Advisory Committee.
The two-day convening provided a rich opportunity for AERA’s leadership to collectively reflect on the significant challenges facing the field; address the role of leadership, research, and collaboration in addressing them; and identify new opportunities within the field and the association to draw on critical insights and understandings to sustain and support the work of education researchers.