Newswise — WASHINGTON, D.C., April 22, 2011—The American Educational Research Association (AERA) has presented Catherine E. Snow, the Patricia Albjerg Graham Professor of Education at Harvard University, its Distinguished Contributions to Research in Education Award for her wide-ranging and influential research in language and literacy development during the past 33 years. Her research is noteworthy for its solid grounding in both linguistics and psychology and its impact on theory and practice. Professor Snow and other outstanding scholars were honored at the Awards Presentation on April 10, during AERA's 92nd Annual Meeting in New Orleans, Louisiana. More than 13,800 education researchers from the United States and 60 countries attended this meeting. The theme was "Inciting the Social Imagination: Education Research for the Public Good.”
“Catherine Snow’s work ranges from detailing the contexts and processes by which children do—or don’t—acquire the register of academic language, to recent interventions that demonstrate how students develop the language and knowledge of academic disciplines,” said P. David Pearson, University of California-Berkeley, in presenting the award. Snow also has synthesized and critiqued collective knowledge of important issues in language and literacy policy, practice, and assessment. “She has provided a compelling example of how to bridge the theory-practice gap in ways that inform both sides of the divide,” Pearson added.
In addition to Professor Snow, other outstanding scholars were honored with Association-wide Awards. AERA President Kris D. Gutiérrez of the University of Colorado–Boulder delivered her Presidential Address, "Designing Resilient Ecologies: Towards a Human Science of Learning."
Richard J. Shavelson, Margaret Jacks Professor of Education Emeritus at Stanford University, was presented the E. F. Lindquist Award, which honors a distinguished scholar and researcher for outstanding research in testing and measurement. AERA and ACT, Inc. cosponsor the award. Shavelson has authored or coauthored more than a dozen books and monographs, and more than 250 articles, reports, and book chapters, including publications for education practitioners, policy makers, measurement specialists and researchers. He has helped to popularize generalizability theory and has pursued significant lines of work on educational indicator systems and on assessments using concept maps, students’ science notebooks, performance assessments, and, more recently, the Collegiate Learning Assessment. He chaired the National Research Council’s Committee on Scientific Principles for Education Research, which published the influential 2002 report Scientific Research in Education; he also chaired the planning committee that produced Science Framework for the 2009 National Assessment of Educational Progress. He is an AERA Fellow and past AERA President.
The Relating Research to Practice Award recognizes outstanding contributions that individuals have made toward increasing practitioner and lay-group understanding of the contributions of education research to the improvement of education practice. Robert Moses, Florida International University and The Algebra Project, received the award in the category of Interpretive Scholarship, while Michael Cole, University of California-San Diego, received the award in the category of professional service.
Moses is widely recognized for his civil rights work since the 1960s. A former MacArthur “Genius” Fellow; Moses used that award to develop The Algebra Project, which provides accelerated mathematics programs to underserved communities across the country. He has interpreted critical education research issues in articles, essays, and testimonies to such diverse audiences as parents, politicians, and community groups. AERA particularly recognizes him for his moving and insightful 2007 testimony to the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee on the anniversary of the Civil Rights Act.
Cole is well known for his contributions to research and theory on culture and cognition and his direction of the internationally prominent Laboratory of Comparative Human Cognition. An AERA Fellow, he is recognized for his work on the after-school education program known as the Fifth Dimension. Since 1996, Cole has worked to establish University-Community Links (UC Links), a network of programs with a long-term strategy for engaging universities and communities to collaborate on after-school programming for underserved youth. UC Links has inspired similar models around the world.
Richard R. Valencia, University of Texas-Austin, received the Outstanding Book Award for an outstanding book-length publication in education research and development. His book, Dismantling Contemporary Deficit Thinking: Educational Thought and Practice, was published by Routledge as part of its Series: The Critical Educator. The concept of deficit, especially as applied to the academic achievement of minority students in U.S. schools, has been presented, supported, and critiqued in some form for nearly a century. The deficit thesis is that failure is principally the fault of the student and his or her background. In Dismantling Contemporary Deficit Thinking, Valencia reconsiders this thesis in current discourses, such as that of “the culture of poverty,” and describes antideficit efforts in fields such as teacher education and educational leadership. His book was praised for noting that “educational inequities by race, and ethnicity are . . . [still] seriously undermining the possibility of an equitable democracy.”
Other Association-wide awards include:
Luis C. Moll, University of Arizona, received the Palmer O. Johnson Memorial Award, which represents the highest quality of academic scholarship published in one of three AERA peer-reviewed journals during the 2010 volume year. His article, “Mobilizing Culture, Language, and Educational Practices: Fulfilling the Promises of Mendez and Brown,” was published in Educational Researcher. Focusing on educational equity, Moll documents the 1946 Mendez v. Westminster case, a precursor to Brown v. Board of Education. He includes the sociocultural context of the case and educational conditions of the Latino community at the time, and then uses his analysis of the case as a backdrop to speak to the need for broad alliances and for mobilizing social, cultural, and linguistic processes of diverse communities in order to address contemporary education issues and education innovations that seek positive change.
James G. Ladwig, University of Newcastle in Australia, was presented the Review of Research Award, which recognizes an outstanding review article which appeared in one of two AERA peer-reviewed journals in 2010. His article, “Beyond Academic Outcomes,” was published in the Review of Research in Education. Ladwig surveys the contemporary educational environment, dominated by the focus on high-stakes testing, to assess what we know about non-academic outcomes in formal schooling. He cautions that “the more sides of a child’s life we address as teachers, the more we open the whole child to our surveillance and control.”
Cynthia E. Coburn, University of California-Berkeley, received the Early Career Award, which recognizes a scholar’s distinguished portfolio of cumulative education research within the first decade following receipt of a doctoral degree. Coburn uses the tools of organizational sociology to understand the relationship between instructional policy and teachers’ classroom practices in urban schools. She has studied these issues in the context of state and national reading policy, innovative school reform programs, and district-wide professional development initiatives. Her groundbreaking articles have brought new conceptual frameworks to understanding the mechanisms by which macro policy initiatives influence the daily practices of teaching and schooling.
William C. Ayers, University of Illinois-Chicago, received the Social Justice in Education Award, which is given in honor of an individual’s outstanding commitment to the advancement of social justice through education research.
Emerson J. Elliott, National Council for Accreditation of Teacher Education, was presented Distinguished Public Service Award, which recognizes exceptional contributions to advancing the use of education research and statistics in shaping policy, and to the provision of sustained support for improving the quality of research and statistics.
Linda Darling-Hammond, Stanford University; Patricia Gándara, University of California-Los Angeles (UCLA); and Mike Rose, also of UCLA, each received a Presidential Citation for their outstanding contributions and continuous service to the broad education research community.
Specifically, Darling-Hammond’s research and policy work have focused on school reform, teaching quality, and educational equity. She is author or editor of 16 books, an AERA Fellow, a past AERA president, a member of the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards, and a member of the National Academy of Education’s executive committee. She has served on many national advisory boards, including a White House panel, and led President Obama’s education policy transition team in 2008–2009.
Gándara is co-director of the Civil Rights Project at UCLA. During her career, she has been a bilingual school psychologist, a social scientist with RAND, and a commissioner for postsecondary education for the State of California, and has directed education research in the California Legislature. An AERA Fellow, Gándara is coauthor of The Latino Education Crisis: The Consequences of Failed Social Policies and coeditor of Forbidden Language: English Learners and Restrictive Language Policies.
Rose centers his research interests on literacy, cognition, work, and teaching and learning. An award-winning researcher, Rose has written several books, including Lives on the Boundary: The Struggles and Achievements of America’s Underprepared; Possible Lives: The Promise of Public Education in America (1995); The Mind at Work: Valuing the Intelligence of the American Worker; and Why School? Reclaiming Education for All of Us.
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The American Educational Research Association (AERA) is the national interdisciplinary research association for approximately 25,000 scholars who undertake research in education. Founded in 1916, AERA aims to advance knowledge about education, to encourage scholarly inquiry related to education, and to promote the use of research to improve education and serve the public good.
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