The Grassroots Community and Youth Organizing for Educational Justice (GCYO) SIG aims to advance research on community and youth organizing, particularly in low income communities and communities of color.

We will work to build a research community that engages with practitioners in organizing groups, educational institutions, and policy-making circles.

We seek to foster research that examines the ways in which organizing efforts affect school improvement and educational equity, youth development, community/democratic revitalization, and social justice.

The GCYO SIG gives out three awards.  Please read below for general information on each award. 

•  The Jean Anyon Graduate Student Paper Award: This Graduate Student Award is intended to honor the life and work of Dr. Jean Anyon, who passed away on September 7, 2013. Dr. Anyon’s pioneering scholarship on the political economy of education, her applied work with urban schools, and her longstanding commitment to mentoring students has left a rich legacy for all of us concerned about education, democracy, and social justice. We at the Grassroots Community and Youth Organizing (GCYO) Special Interest Group (SIG) of the American Educational Research Association (AERA) wish to honor Dr. Anyon’s legacy through the recognition and support of exemplary graduate students.

• The Impact Award:  The Impact Award recognizes a scholar at any career stage whose work in the past academic year has made a notable impact on the field of grassroots community or youth organizing for education. We define impact broadly to include a seminal publication, such as a ground-breaking book, journal article, or research report, an influential piece of public scholarship, or a significant contribution to praxis, such as work that supports or strengthens community-based efforts to improve education or work that exemplifies the ideal of the activist-scholar.

• The Early Career Award: This award will recognize a scholar whose initial career shows a high level of productivity. This productivity will be reflected in the quality and impact of the recipient’s research on grassroots community or youth organizing for educational renewal. Recipients of this award must be engaged in a program of inquiry that extends a significant line of research, fills a gap in current knowledge, raises timely questions about extant knowledge, or addresses important problems of theory and/or practice related to educational organizing. The scholar must be pre-tenure and within 6 years of receipt of doctoral degree.