Dear Colleagues,

Welcome to the Dewey Studies SIG! Whether you're a longtime member or discovering our community for the first time, I'm glad you're here.

Our SIG exists to foster inquiry in education connected, in letter and in spirit, to the work of John Dewey. We are a community of scholars, practitioners, and graduate students who share a belief that Dewey's ideas about experience, democracy, and growth still have a great deal to teach us. Many of us also find his ideas urgently relevant to the challenges facing education today.

Each year we gather at the AERA Annual Meeting for paper sessions, symposia, and our business meeting. Our work doesn't stop there. In January 2026 we launched Dewey's Salon, a monthly online gathering for reading and discussing recent Deweyan scholarship. Each session features a short presentation by an author, followed by open conversation with colleagues near and far. The Salon has become one of the most welcoming parts of our community. It's a place where established scholars and newcomers think together about new work in the field.

If you've recently published Deweyan scholarship and would like to be featured in a future Salon, please reach out to our Graduate Student Representative, Rebecca Taylor, at rt2904@tc.columbia.edu. Rebecca can also add you to the RSVP list for upcoming sessions.

I want to extend a special thank-you to everyone who has served as a proposal reviewer for the Annual Meeting. Careful, generous labor associated with reviewing proposals makes our program possible, and it reflects the spirit of shared inquiry at the heart of this SIG. I'm also grateful to our Past Chair, Jiwon Kim, and to all our officers for their dedication to this community. Please share news of your publications, events, and projects with me at jessica.heybach@wmich.edu so we can celebrate them together.

I hope you'll join us, online at the Salon or in person at the Annual Meeting, and help keep Dewey's spirit of inquiry alive.

With warm regards,

Jessica Heybach
Chair, Dewey Studies SIG
Western Michigan University