January 2020

The incoming editors of the  American Educational Research Journal (AERJ)—editor-in-chief Ellen Goldring and coeditors Angela Calabrese Barton, Michael Cunningham, Sean Kelly, Madeline Mavrogordato, and Peter Youngs—have set forth a vision for their term (2020–2022) in their Editors’ Introduction, now available open-access online. The introduction will also appear in print in the February issue. The editors express their enthusiasm about “continuing to advance the journal’s leading role in the publication of scientifically rigorous, theoretically grounded, and practically relevant research. Specifically, we seek to publish empirical research that addresses competing perspectives on pressing educational problems and solutions.”

They emphasized four key priorities as editors:

• continue to publish rigorous and relevant empirical scholarship;
• maintain focus on a range of diverse topics, methodologies, and research participants;
• expand the contexts and settings represented in AERJ articles; and
• concentrate on scholarship’s impact on the field.

About the Editors

Ellen Goldring is Patricia and Rodes Hart Professor of Leadership, Policy and Organizations, Peabody College, Vanderbilt University. Her research interests focus on the intersection of education policy and school improvement, with particular emphases on urban school district and education leadership. An AERA Fellow and past vice president of AERA's Division L (Educational Policy and Politics), Goldring studies leadership practice and the implementation and effects of interventions such as professional development, coaching, and performance feedback. She is the recipient of the Roald F. Campbell Lifetime Achievement Award from the University Council for Educational Administration.

Angela Calabrese Barton is a professor in the Educational Studies Department at the University of Michigan. Her research is grounded in the intersections of teaching and learning science with an emphasis on equity and social justice. Her recent work takes place within three interrelated strands: (a) working within the intersection of formal/informal education in support of understanding and designing new possibilities for equitably consequential teaching and learning; (b) designing teaching and learning tools and experiences that promote more expansive learning outcomes, such as critical agency, identity work, and social transformation (as grounded within expanding disciplinary expertise); and (c) methodologies for embracing authentic “research + practice” work that attends to practitioner and youth voice, and critically engages the goals of equity and justice. Her work takes place in classrooms, makerspaces, and community organizations.

Michael Cunningham is a professor in the Department of Psychology with a joint appointment in the Africana Studies undergraduate program at Tulane University. He also serves as an associate provost for graduate studies and research in Tulane's Office of Academic Affairs. As a developmental psychologist, Cunningham's research focuses on racial, ethnic, psychosocial, and socioeconomic processes that affect psychological well‐being, adjustment to chronic stressful events, and academic achievement among African American adolescents and their families. He is currently studying gender‐specific patterns of resilience and vulnerability in urban African American participants. He has published over 50 peer-reviewed articles and book chapters on these topics.

Sean Kelly is a professor and director of PhD studies in the Department of Administrative and Policy Studies at the University of Pittsburgh. Kelly studies the social organization of schools, student engagement, and teacher effectiveness. On these topics he has published more than 60 peer-reviewed scholarly articles and book chapters in a wide array of top-tier journals, including Educational Researcher and AERJ. His research has received some of the most prestigious awards in education, including the Spencer Foundation’s Exemplary Dissertation Award and the Exemplary Research in Teaching and Teacher Education award from AERA’s Division K.

Madeline Mavrogordato is an associate professor of K–12 educational administration (with tenure) in the College of Education at Michigan State University. Her research investigates how education policies shape outcomes for underserved student populations, particularly immigrants and English learners. Mavrogordato also studies how to develop and support effective school leaders to serve students from diverse backgrounds. She draws from a robust methodological repertoire to investigate research questions using quantitative, qualitative, and mixed methods approaches. She received Division L’s Outstanding Dissertation Award in 2013.

Peter Youngs is a professor in the Department of Curriculum, Instruction and Special Education at the University of Virginia. He has published extensively on teacher quality, educational leadership, and school reform and has pioneered the use of innovative research methods, including social network analysis and the experience sampling method, in the area of beginning teacher induction. His studies have appeared in numerous journals that focus on teacher quality, leadership, and school reform, including Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis (EEPA), Educational Researcher, and Review of Educational Research. Previously, Young served as coeditor of EEPA (2016–2018).