AERA Leadership Convenes for Fall Coordinated Committee Meeting








AERA President Deborah  Loewenberg Ball
welcomes CCM attendees. 

October 2017

More than one hundred AERA leaders and representatives gathered in Washington, D.C., for the association’s 2017 Coordinated Committee Meeting (CCM) on October 20–21. This annual event provides an opportunity for most of AERA’s committees to meet individually and also to come together collectively in general sessions to discuss significant issues relating to the field.

Attendees convened to address this year’s AERA Common Task: “How can education research—its products and practices—be leveraged in the debates and discourse in and about public education? What are different ways to do this and with what goals?” This task was addressed in four general sessions designed to contribute to the ongoing work of the association, including Centennial programing and the 2017 Annual Meeting.

AERA President Deborah Loewenberg Ball presided over the CCM and coordinated the discussion on the AERA Common Task. Alongside attendees, Ball and AERA Executive Director Felice J. Levine guided conversations on learning how education researchers can confront and strengthen understanding about the challenges facing public education.

“CCM presents an opportunity to come together and learn from one another,” said Ball. “Taking this experience and utilizing it will enhance researchers’ engagement efforts with others on the critical role that public education plays in our society.”









Gustavo Fischman (Arizona State University) speaks
during the first CCM session. 

The first session was titled “What is public education for?” and featured remarks from Gustavo E. Fischman (Arizona State University), chair of the AERA International Relations Committee. Fischman’s comments highlighted the need for new ideas and solutions in addressing issues faced by public education practitioners around the world.

Audience members engaged in collaborative group discussions, following Fischman’s comments, to discuss “the different things that we think need to be commented on, reinforced, or challenged” with regard to issues in public education.

The second and third sessions targeted the goal of common high-quality schooling and the research interests of scholars in the debates over public education.

The second session focused on one significant question: “Is there a dream of common schooling toward which we can or should strive in the U.S.? Suzanne M. Wilson, 2018 Annual Meeting Co-Program Chair (University of Connecticut), kicked off the session with comments on her own experience in common schooling and the importance of advocating for all public institutions.

Panelists Oscar Jimenez-Castellanos (Arizona State University), Crystal T. Laura (Chicago State University), Margaret J. Maaka (University of Hawaii–Manoa), Michele S. Moses (University of Colorado Boulder), Ruby Takanishi (New America), and William Trent (University of Illinois–Urbana-Champaign) joined Wilson and audience members for further discussion of equal access to high-quality curriculum and instructors, institutional race relations, and educational inequities in varying school districts.

 




Panelists speak during CCM's third session.

In the third general session, moderated by AERA Past President Vivian L. Gadsden (University of Pennsylvania), panelists and audience members considered the question “How do scholars bring research to bear in the debates over public education, and what are we learning about this work?”

During this conversation, Audrey Amrein-Beardsley (Arizona State University), Kara S. Finnigan (University of Rochester), Shaun R. Harper (University of Southern California), Zeus Leonardo (University of California–Berkeley), and Camille M. Wilson (University of Michigan) tackled the roles that practitioners, policy makers, and scholars can play in utilizing research to engage in communities and discourses around understanding the struggles over public education.

“In addition to important committee work, CCM gave leaders in the field an opportunity to come together under ‘one tent’ for meaningful conversations on critical research issues related to the advancement of public education,” said Levine. “This dialogue reflects and further advances AERA’s and the field’s commitment to using research to improve our public institutions and to create pathways to educational opportunities and growth.”