May 2026

AERA will launch its 2026 webinar series on STEM Data and Data Use with a workshop titled "Unlocking the STEM Education Data Vault" on Thursday, June 11, from 12:00 p.m. to 1:15 p.m. ET. Expert researchers will discuss publicly available large-scale datasets that can be used to address research questions in STEM education and learning. The workshop is free of charge, but advance registration is required.

The first workshop in the series will focus on datasets and data analysis tools available through the Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research (ICPSR), the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES), and the RAND Corporation. Presenters will highlight education datasets from national and international studies, as well as administrative data from states and local jurisdictions. They will also discuss how to access the datasets and analyze them using quantitative, qualitative, and mixed-method approaches.

Subsequent workshops in the series, scheduled for July and August, will examine specific research topics in STEM education and learning using large-scale data.

The workshops are part of the AERA-ICPSR Partnership for Expanding Education Research in STEM (PEERS) initiative, funded by the National Science Foundation.

“These workshops will be a valuable resource for scholars and researchers seeking to leverage existing data to explore STEM topics,” said George L. Wimberly, AERA director of professional development and co-principal investigator of the PEERS initiative. “AERA aims to promote these datasets and introduce the education research community to new and innovative analysis tools throughout the webinar series.”

The workshops are designed for graduate students, early career researchers, practitioners, and others in the education research community interested in examining STEM topics using readily available data. Each workshop will be held live, and recordings will be made available through the PEERS Data Hub.