The American Educational Research Association (AERA) is concerned with the improvement of educational research and practice through the conduct of scholarly inquiry and the dissemination of information and ideas related to education. AERA and its members are committed to act affirmatively in support of open inquiry and social justice, in accord with the following commitments:
- to the understanding and improvement of education for all peoples, with full respect for the diversity of their characteristics, and for the perspectives, traditions, and epistemologies that they represent.
- to the full inclusion of and social justice for all of the constituencies that affect and are affected by the educational process.
- to the highest standards of scholarship and practice in its commitment to social justice, both within the Association and in society at large.
AERA honors the values in this declaration through its programs, publications, and meetings; through its committee appointments, selection of honorees, and its allocation of resources; and through continued vigilance to ensure that concerns about equity, excellence, openness of inquiry, and social justice are addressed with sensitivity and fairness.
AERA strives to be more global in its outreach programs to involve important scholarship wherever it occurs. The participation of international scholars in these efforts is key to success.
AERA Government Relations Department advocates on issues affecting visa difficulties experienced by international scholars and students traveling to the United States, and has participated in programs sponsored by UNESCO and the U.S. Department of Education addressing workforce and capacity development issues.
Membership
AERA governance includes the International Relations Committee (IRC). One of the tasks of the IRC is to encourage international participation in the AERA annual meeting by involving international scholars in the program and awarding travel funds for their attendance. IRC sponsored six symposia and three paper sessions at the annual meeting. They also co-sponsored six Presidential Invited Sessions with other AERA governance entities. Eleven recipients from Turkey, Taiwan, Singapore, China, Malaysia, Chile and Brazil received travel awards.
In addition, AERA International Aligned Organizations presented nine sessions at the annual meeting. These included:
- Current Perspectives on Leadership in the UK. British Educational Leadership, Management and Administration Society; Learning Innovative Learning Environments, Dutch Educational Research Association;
- Interrogating Transformative Praxis in Teaching and Teacher Education: Cases from the Pacific. New Zealand Association for Research in Education;
- Quality of Education; Indicators to Improve Quality of Education at School and Classroom Level. Flemish Forum for Educational Research; Education in Contemporary Australia: Localized Effects and Global Dimensions;
- Australian Association for Research in Education; Psychological, Contextual, and Gender Influence on Achievement in Canadian Schools. Canadian Society for Studies in Education; Policy and Practice in Early Years Education in the UK: Methodological Issues in Research on Effectiveness. British Educational Research Association;
- Research-Based Leadership Development Across the Commonwealth. Commonwealth Council for Educational Administration and Management; and Challenges and Potential in School Effectiveness and Improvement Internationally. International Congress for School Effectiveness and School Improvement