March 2025

Dear Teacher-as-Researcher SIG Members – Present, Past, and Future,

Thank you so much for visiting the homepage of AERA’s Teacher-as-Researcher Special Interest Group (TAR-SIG) website.  On this page, you will find out more about our unique and, we think, very exciting SIG.  As you may already know, our mission is to feature, encourage and advance the work and too often ignored perspectives of PreK-12 classroom teachers throughout all phases of AERA activities and opportunities. We are the current Co-Chairs of the TAR SIG and we welcome you whether you are yourself a PreK-12 teacher, work closely with them, or support them, as we do.

We are Dr. Alan Amtzis (The College of New Jersey) and Dr. Mary Klehr (Madison WI public schools/UW-Madison), and we are thrilled to be working together in the service of this SIG that we care so much about.  We have each devoted a full generation of our professional (and personal) lives to developing coursework, experiences, and supportive programs that help teachers articulate and share their unique and critical contributions to educational research. Quite simply, educational research looks and operates differently from inside the classroom. When teachers are at the center of the inquiry process, the questions are different, the methodologies are diverse, the language is distinctive, and the findings are uniquely consequential. We know that reflective research practices that enhance, rather than efface, teachers’ identity and subjectivity, can play a central role in making one a better teacher in ways that only teachers can define for themselves. Maybe this is why the presentation of teachers’ practice-rooted inquiry often feels like a celebration of teachers’ lived experience and knowledge.

Can something that demands such intense personal work also be exuberant? We think so and we hope you do as well. We are both happy to be co-chairing this SIG and think you’ll find an expression of that in this year’s program at the Annual Meeting in Denver.