Mid-Western Educational Research Association
Annual Meeting
Oct. 24-26, 2018
Cincinnati, OH
Conference Theme: Conducting Educational Research that Matters*
How can we make educational research matter even more? Schools and universities are challenged by a host of social justice issues. The news is rife with stories about culture clashes, political ideologues, and divisive language. The struggle to negotiate, resist, challenge, and/or reaffirm particular educational practices is at the heart of educational research. Unfortunately, educational research is commonly accessed solely by those in the field of education, and often only at the level of academia. It can feel like educational researchers read and write for each other, and that changes in schooling move at a very slow pace.
In order to meet the needs of students, parents, teachers, school leaders, and communities, we must choose topics and develop research studies that are relevant and meaningful to contemporary schooling. Moreover, we may need to go beyond our typical publication possibilities so that what we learn is distributed in a way that can be accessed by those inside and outside of the field. Some of the current social justice concerns in education include the following:
- Charter schools
- School vouchers
- High-stakes testing and funding for testing and test preparation
- Access to technology
- Over-identification of students of color and English learners in special education
- Corporatization of schooling
- Wealth disparities between schools
- Governance of curricular decisions
- Cost of higher education
How might we more effectively engage in and utilize educational research that addresses injustices in education? How might we better negotiate inequalities during the research process? How might we attend to such issues as power and representation? How might we more strategically and holistically distribute findings? Come to the MWERA conference in Cincinnati in 2018 to explore these issues and more!
More details about the 2018 MWERA Annual Meeting
*As always, submissions that do not match the conference theme are welcome.