Preeminent Scholar Edmund Gordon to Be Named Honorary President of the American Educational Research Association Today
Preeminent Scholar Edmund Gordon to Be Named Honorary President of the American Educational Research Association Today
 
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For Immediate Release: April 12, 2021

Contact:
Tony Pals, tpals@aera.net
(202) 238-3235

Tong Wu, twu@aera.net
(202) 238-3233

Preeminent Scholar Edmund Gordon to Be Named Honorary President of the American Educational Research Association Today

Washington, April 12—Edmund W. Gordon, a distinguished education researcher renowned for his pioneering scholarship on the gaps in education opportunities and supports for children of color and low-income students, will be named honorary president of the American Educational Research Association (AERA).

Gordon, the first person in AERA’s 105-year history to receive this recognition, will be installed as honorary president today at the association’s 2021 Virtual Annual Meeting.

  • This special session will take place 2:10 p.m. – 2:40 p.m. ET today and will be available for public viewing on Zoom. ASL and close captioning will be provided.

Gordon is the John M. Musser Professor of Psychology, Emeritus at Yale University, the Richard March Hoe Professor Emeritus of Psychology and Education at Teachers College, Columbia University, and founding and emeritus director of the college’s Institute of Urban and Minority Education.

“Not only has Dr. Gordon transformed the fields of education research, practice, and policy through his groundbreaking scholarship, but he’s been a lifelong mentor, colleague, and friend to countless numbers of researchers, teachers, and students,” said AERA President Shaun R. Harper (University of Southern California).

“The tremendous significance of Dr. Gordon’s lifetime of work and its revolutionary impact on the research enterprise, education policy, and society cannot be overstated,” said AERA Executive Director Felice J. Levine. “He’s also been a generous, compassionate, and caring mentor who has profoundly affected the lives and careers of scholars for decades.”

In honoring Gordon at a special event at the Annual Meeting,  Harper and Levine will be joined by Kenji Hakuta (Stanford University), who will lead a brief conversation with Gordon, and four former AERA presidents: Linda Darling Hammond (Learning Policy Institute), Carol D. Lee (Northwestern University), James Banks (University of Washington), and Amy Stuart Wells (Teachers College, Columbia University).

Gordon’s distinguished career spans professional practice, scholarly life as a minister, clinical and counseling psychologist, research scientist, author, editor, and professor. His research continues to contribute to American education and culture.

His writings on educational policy and practice include such topics as: defining and mitigating the academic achievement gap, conceiving the policy and practice of affirmative development of academic ability, better defining and fostering students’ intellective competence, and the valuable contributions of the notions of compensatory, supplementary, and comprehensive Education, which became the principal features of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965.

Gordon has written and edited more than 15 books, eight annual volumes of two scholarly journals, and over 200 book chapters and scholarly articles.

Gordon is an AERA Fellow, was the inaugural speaker in 2004 for the AERA Annual Brown Lecture in Education Research, and received the AERA Distinguished Contributions to Research in Education Award in 2000 and the AERA Relating Research to Practice Award in 2010. In 1996–97, he chaired the AERA Task Force on the Role and Future of Minorities.

He is an elected fellow of the American Psychological Association, American Society of Psychological Science, and American Association for Orthopsychiatry, and a life member of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. In 1968, he was elected as a member of the National Academy of Education and, in 2017, was elected a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

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About AERA
The American Educational Research Association (AERA) is the largest national interdisciplinary research association devoted to the scientific study of education and learning. Founded in 1916, AERA advances knowledge about education, encourages scholarly inquiry related to education, and promotes the use of research to improve education and serve the public good. Find AERA on FacebookTwitter, and Instagram.