Newswise — WASHINGTON, D.C., March 9, 2020—The American Educational Research Association has announced it will not hold a place-based Annual Meeting in San Francisco, CA, in April 2020 due to the coronavirus. Instead, AERA is shifting to a virtual meeting.
The AERA conference, which is the largest gathering of scholars in the field of education research, was expected to draw at least 16,000 attendees to San Francisco. It was scheduled for April 17–21. Conference attendees include AERA members and scholars from aligned fields and disciplines, policymakers, and education practitioners.
In a message to AERA members and annual meeting registrants, AERA Executive Director Felice J. Levine and AERA President Vanessa Siddle Walker, wrote:
Sadly, the pernicious presence and spread of the coronavirus internationally, including in recent weeks and days in the United States, makes it both impossible to hold a meeting that would even approximate the value of our annual place-based gathering and irresponsible to encourage, expect, or stand silent when attendees could be exposed to a communicable disease, affect Bay area workers or residents, and return to their homes transmitting an illness to family and friends even before it manifests itself.
This is coupled with the recent State of Emergency declared by the mayor of San Francisco last week, a further Declaration by the Governor, and growing incidence of confirmed reports in California and in the United States.
In the coming weeks, AERA will provide detailed information on its AERA website about the virtual meeting.
“Although an in-person AERA Annual Meeting will not take place in 2020, it is our goal to reimage the opportunities of a virtual meeting that honors our professional responsibility to share significant research for the public good,” wrote Levine and Walker. “Our goal is to make this a high quality alternative professional experience, both for our members as well as for those interested in educational problems in the U.S. and world. And, we plan to open on April 17, 2020—the originally planned opening day for AERA.”
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About AERA The American Educational Research Association (AERA) is the largest national interdisciplinary research association devoted to the scientific study of education and learning. Founded in 1916, AERA advances knowledge about education, encourages scholarly inquiry related to education, and promotes the use of research to improve education and serve the public good. Find AERA on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.
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