AERA 2016 – Public Scholarship to Educate Diverse Democracies

Experts from major institutions in the field of educational research – mostly from Germany and the US – convened in Washington on April 9 2016 to discuss governance approaches in school education from an international perspective. The seminar was organized by the service unit International Cooperation in Education (ice), on the occasion of the annual meeting of the American Educational Research Association (AERA). The event predominantly focused on the potential offered by digital methods and data assessment in empirical educational research for the purpose of school improvement.

Dr. Joann Halpern, Director of the German Center for Research and Innovation (GCRI) in New York, introduced to the event. The GCRI was a co-operating partner to the seminar. The introductory note was followed by a panel discussion on “Data-Driven School Improvement. The Role of Data for Teaching and Learning“ presenting Prof. Dr. Henry Levin (Columbia University), Prof. Dr. Eckhard Klieme (DIPF), Dr. Jack Buckley (Senior Vice President, College Board) and Prof. Dr. Benó Csapó (University of Szeged). The panel was hosted by Prof. Dr. Petra Stanat from the Institute for Educational Quality Improvement in Berlin.

The subsequent poster session displayed US-American and German research infrastructures, educational research institutions and large-scale comparative educational assessments. Research from the US was represented by the National Center for Education Statistics, the National Center for Research on Evaluation, Standards and Student Testing and the College Board, while research in Germany was represented by the Leibniz Institute for Educational Trajectories, the Centre for International Student Assessment, and the Leibniz Educational Research Network.