Thank you!

Partners: The business meeting was made possible by the generous support of two sponsors, Emerald and Springer publishers. We also thank our SIG's partners: Andy Hargreaves (The Journal of Professional Capital and Community); Tom Hatch (International Education News); Pak Tee Ng (Education Research for Policy and Practice journal); Michael Schratz (International Congress for School Effectiveness and Improvement); and Dennis Shirley (Journal of Educational Change). We also thank Michael Fullan, Ann Lieberman, and Dennis Shirley for donating their new books for our book drawing.

SIG updates: We would like to thank our inaugural mentors, who mentored our SIG's emerging scholars pre, during, and post AERA: Carol Campbell, Amanda Datnow, Michael Fullan, Andy Hargreaves, Thomas Hatch, Ann Lieberman, Sharon Lynch, Pak Tee Ng, Beatriz Pont, Viviane Robinson, Kim Schildkamp, Dennis Shirley, and Allison Skerrett.

Awards: Congratulations to our two award winners: Dr. Santiago Rincón-Gallardo on his Emerging Scholar Award and Na Mi Bang on her Graduate Student Travel Award! We thank the Awards Committee: Susan Elliott-Johns (Nipissing University, Canada), Pak Tee Ng (National Institute of Education, Singapore), and Chriss Walther-Thomas (Virginia Commonwealth University, USA) for their service on the Committee.

Keynote: We also thank Beatriz Pont for her thought-provoking and timely keynote, "School Improvement and Education Policy-Making: A Difficult Relationship." We thank Jal Mehta (Harvard University) and Pak Tee Ng (National Institute of Education, Singapore) for serving as the session discussants.

2016 SIG Sessions: We had a record-breaking year for the Educational Change SIG! This year, we had 36 papers and 6 symposium proposals submitted to the SIG. Of these submissions, we accepted 3 symposia (50% acceptance rate) and 20 papers (55% acceptance rate) for presentation at the Annual Meeting in April. The papers were presented in either panel presentations or round tables. 

Assessing Leadership for Adaptive Change Through the Lens of Complexity Theory
With a focus on leadership for adaptive change—leadership practices that intend to transform, not reinforce, the status quo—this session examines three case studies of early career, urban school principals from Catholic, charter, and district schools who sought to enact adaptive change by distributing leadership responsibilities throughout their schools and creating a school culture shared by all community members. Drawing upon aspects of complexity theory, we explicate processes through which principals experienced and enacted adaptive leadership (Bennett & Elman, 2007). To conclude, we assess these studies through the meta-theoretical umbrella of integral theory (Wilber, 2006), an analytic lens that can serve as both an interpretive framework and operating system for school leaders (Forman & Ross, 2013).

Inside the Opt Out Movement: The Role of Parent Protest in Educational Change
In 2014-2015 hundreds of thousands of families across the United States decided to opt-out of high stakes standardized testing. As a result of the efforts of these opt-out families; school leaders, education stakeholders, and policymakers are reexamining both the use of assessments and broader educational change efforts in the United States. The objective of this session is to provide greater insight into this complex educational change phenomena through a combination of first-hand accounts from the front-lines of the opt out movement and emergent empirical research on the topic. Key topics will include what rationale informs the opt-out strategy, what are the demographics of opt-out families, and an analysis of the impact of opt-outs on school report cards and teacher evaluations.

Successful Educational Research that Overcomes Inequalities
After more than two decades working on educational research that has been recognized internationally, CREA has laid the ground of scientific knowledge that contributes to overcome inequalities. This has been achieved through rigorous scientific work that joins together scientific excellence with the demands, concerns and everyday reality of schools and the broader society, tackling issues such as school success, vulnerable groups, gender violence and the methodology of research itself. The scientific achievements presented in this session not only entailed the creation of new scientific knowledge: they have achieved unprecedented social and political impact, as hundreds of schools and thousands of children in different contexts have improved their educational achievement, and have created egalitarian educational spaces free of violence.

2015 CONFERENCES

SEPTEMBER 2015

World Education Research Association (WERA) will hold its 2015 Focal Meeting in conjunction with the European Educational Research Association (EERA) at the European Conference on Educational Research (ECER), which will be hosted by the Corvinus University of Budapest from September 8-11, 2015.

OCTOBER 2015

SRA International Conference, October 17-21, 2015 in Las Vegas will bring together research administrators from across the globe to learn, share and transform ideas into solutions with more than 135 innovative learning sessions. 

Association for Experiential Education International Conference, "Social Justice: Creating Change," registration is now open! Conference will be October 22-25, 2015 in Portland, Oregon. 

ASCD Conference, “Connect. Develop. Empower,” is October 30-November 1, 2015 in San Diego, California. 

NOVEMBER 2015

American Evaluation Association Annual Conference, November 9-14, 2015 in Chicago. Participants will have the opportunity to learn about exemplary evaluations, enabling evaluation environments, evaluation policies, evaluation theories and methods, and research on evaluation from a range of cultures and regions throughout the world. 

Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management (APPAM) 2015 Fall Research Conference, "The Golden Age of Evidence-Based Research" will be November 12-14, 2015 in Miami, Florida.