January 2016

AERA President Jeannie Oakes has announced Linda Darling-Hammond and Warren Simmons as major speakers at the 2016 Annual Meeting. The meeting—scheduled for April 8–12 in Washington, D.C.—is the single largest gathering of scholars in the education research field and is a showcase for groundbreaking, innovative studies in a diverse array of areas, from early education through higher education.

Darling-Hammond, AERA 1996 Past President, will give the AERA Distinguished Lecture. She is Charles E. Ducommun Professor of Education Emeritus at Stanford University where she is Faculty Director of the Stanford Center for Opportunity Policy in Education. She has advised school leaders and policy makers at the local, state, and federal levels including serving as director of President Obama's education policy transition team. Her research and policy work focus on issues of educational equity, teaching quality, and school reform.

Simmons, Fellow and former Executive Director at the Annenberg Institute for School Reform (AISR) at Brown University, will give the Wallace Foundation Distinguished Lecture. Simmons directs the work of AISR and team-teaches a course in urban systems and structure in Brown University’s Urban Education Policy master’s program. Previously, Dr. Simmons was founding director of the Philadelphia Education Fund, a reform support organization that helped the School District of Philadelphia to fund, develop, and implement new academic standards, content-based professional development, and standards-based curriculum resources, as part of the Children Achieving reform agenda.

Additional information about these and other noteworthy sessions will become available in the coming weeks. The full Annual Meeting schedule will be released in mid-February. (Click here to sign up for AERA16 Insider, AERA’s monthly Annual Meeting e-newsletter, for updates and useful meeting information.)

More than 15,000 attendees are expected at the 2016 Annual Meeting, including nearly 10,000 presenters. The meeting’s theme is "Public Scholarship to Educate Diverse Democracies."

The Annual Meeting will include more than 2,500 sessions—including major addresses and lectures; "presidential" sessions featuring panel discussions and speakers on key issues; research and science policy-oriented sessions; and research paper presentations. For an early look at major addresses and lectures and a sampling of presidential sessions click here—and check back often for updates.