AERA Research Voices features education researchers sharing their area of study and findings and why it matters for education, policy, and practice, highlighting the people and perspectives driving research that helps deepen our understanding of teaching, learning, and educational opportunity.
Explore open access education research from AERA members and Annual Meeting attendees in the i-Presentation Gallery and Open Paper Repository.
Alicia Jane Peras University of Arizona Research Focus: Adult and Lifelong Learning
"I think it's important to bring the conversations about the lived experiences of students or adult learners specifically in a non-formal education setting, specifically in under-resourced settings."
Aloysius Anyichie Brandon University Research Focus: Culturally Responsive Curriculum
"My research is about supporting students' engagement and motivation in the classroom context. I developed a framework which I called culturally responsive self-regulated learning framework."
Theodorea Regina Berry Montclair State University Research Focus: Black Women in Education
“My research is focused on the lived experiences of Black women and the ways in which their experiences provide us with knowledge, specifically in the context of curriculum studies and the ways in which we construct knowledge, disseminate knowledge, and produce knowledge.”
Bhushan Dahal Florida State University Research Focus: School-Community Partnerships
“The research that I'm doing is on school and community partnerships, how community can get involved in school, school system, because school is always a part of community, but community has always been excluded from school in a way.”
Ryan Sermon University of Arizona Research Focus: Military-Connected Students
"There's a lot of talk about why are we trying to isolate these military or veteran students, but it's really about the psychological safety and them having their own space."
Chandler Patton Miranda Molloy University Research Focus: Immigrant Youth Education
"We are in a particular moment for immigrant communities, and it's important for schools to be thinking about what shifts they can make in order to make schools safer and places of belonging."
Melody Isabela Claremont Graduate University Research Focus: First Gen and Immigrant Students
"'Asian American' is a big term, an umbrella for many different subgroups, and there's a lot of subgroups that are not even represented."
Lyn Scott University of California, East Bay Research Focus: Biliteracy
"Part of our biliteracy project looks at how teachers can support their multilingual students … to use their full linguistic repertoire, including their home languages, any languages they're learning, as well as English."
Nia Ladson Drexel University Research Focus: Black Teacher Retention
“How do we create an environment where teachers and Black educators in particular want to come and work and service our communities.”
Paul Nalli Arizona State University Research Focus: School Leadership
"Despite all kinds of professional development, leadership remains unprepared, unaware, unwilling, unable, and unsupported to advance some of the mandates that are placed upon them."
Ruth Cuasialpud-Canchala University of Arizona Research Focus: Indigenous Students in Higher Education
"My research project aims to examine how Indigenous students are navigating their transition from high school to higher education."
Kimisha Simpson Ignite Jamaica Fund; St. Joseph's University Research Focus: Education in Jamaica
“My research and my work is really focused on the Caribbean population and demographics, specifically Jamaica, and really amplifying the voices of educators and students in Jamaica, on the island and then also across the diaspora.”
Augustine Owusu Achiaw Clemson University Research Focus: Improving STEM Instruction
"I'm working on how to support teachers in integrating science and engineering practices, and that's one side of it, and the other side of looking at how we can help students develop their scientific reasoning skills."
Chae D'Ann Ray University of Texas Rio Grande Valley Research Focus: Adolescent Literacy
"The research that I've been focused on lately is really digging into what district leaders are doing in order to combat the challenges that they're facing with adolescent readers right now, post-NAEP and post-COVID."
Aileen Kangavary University of South Florida Research Focus: School Counseling
“My intervention is free and it's evidence-based, so I'm hoping it's another toolkit, another tool in the toolbox for school counselors, psychologists to bring into the school system when they are very overwhelmed.”
Sairagul Matikeeva-Kinney University of North Georgia Research Focus: International Students' Belonging
"My research is about international students' sense of belonging, sense of matter and marginality, and how those senses depend on international students' social engagement practices with their American peers."
Charmaine Davis-Grant Ohio Department of Education & Workforce Research Focus: Out-of-School Instruction
"I've seen firsthand the power of these programs and what they can do for youth and their families."
Arnob Kumar Saha University of North Texas Research Focus: Experiential Learning
"Once you touch something and learn from it, it really sticks in your mind more than just reading about it in your book chapter."
Graham Zulu University of Denver Research Focus: Identifying Dropout Factors
“The model that I developed is able to differentiate between individuals who are at risk of, say, dropping out of the treatment and individuals who are about to complete the treatment itself.”
Octavio Pescador Los Angeles Unified School District; UCLA Research Focus: Social Emotional Learning
“We have been studying for the past four years the impact of social emotional learning integration on the academic and other outcomes of students, and we found that there's been a very positive and noticeable impact.”
Aakash Chowkase Yale University Research Focus: Social Emotional Learning
“I study emotional intelligence and concern for others, and the hope is to make students, especially adolescents, middle school, high school students, have a greater empathy and compassion for others.”
Christi Bergin University of Missouri Research Focus: Prosocial Education
"Teachers report gaining roughly 30 minutes per week of instructional time because students are less disruptive."
Megan Wiedbusch University of Central Florida Research Focus: Technology in Student Learning
“We know that technology can create a divide between learners, and we're trying to bridge that gap and allow students to be more engaged with the work that they're doing, and looking at things like individual differences.”
Niloufar Bayati North Carolina State University Research Focus: AI in Higher Education
“My research explores generative AI adoption in higher education and how students in higher ed are adopting to this technology to use in their academic tasks.”
Dominic Egure Oklahoma State University Research Focus: AI Adoption in K-12
"What I'm interested in is actually using that AI to scaffold knowledge, to help students be better on what they are learning."