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The annual meetings of the American Educational Research Association just wrapped up, an enormous event attended by something like 15,000 scholars from across the world. It was, as always, overwhelming.  This time, however, in a mainly positive way thanks to the efforts of the incredibly attentive and creative Kris Renn . Since Kris worked so hard to make the 2013 AERA far better than AERAs of the past, I want to honor that by noting some of the best changes, and proposing some additional innovations for the future. The Latest & Greatest of AERA: 1. Free Wifi everywhere . This year, for the first time, in every space of the conference we were able to get online and participate in Twitter chats, send each other papers in real time, and convey follow-up thanks immediately. This was no easy feat, since the conference was spread across multiple hotels rather than a single convention center.  The Wifi was easy to find, easy to access, and much much appreciated. 2. Twitter . ...

Last night Liam and I attended a talk by Derek Bok , Harvard's president emeritus, hosted by the Spencer Foundation at the meetings of the American Educational Research Association in Vancouver.  Due to a lack of Wifi and data service, I couldn't tweet the speech, which was probably good because we both got a little worked up. Here's a bit about why. Bok is a thoughtful, experienced leader in higher education and I have long appreciated his efforts to get colleges and universities to pay attention to undergraduate education.  He's written a book on the topic, and found a set of Bok Centers on many campuses to try and get faculty involved (unfortunately, as he admitted last night, engagement in the centers is often low). The main thrust of his speech was that professors need to get focused on rigorously improving undergraduate education because policy changes are bringing a reform agenda focused on student outcomes, and we'd best get prepared. We ought to do this, h...

The recent decision by the American Educational Research Association (AERA) to hold a news conference condemning Arizona's new immigration law was somewhat unpredictable, and according to at least a few observers, unwise. For example, Rick Hess told the Chronicle of Higher Education it wasn't "smart politics" to "baldly politicize the role of research." The Chronicle 's editors fanned the flames further by titling its article, "Education-research group puts itself on the border of advocacy." Oh, the horror--research and advocacy meeting, having coffee, perhaps even deciding to date. The children which could result are feared by PhDs everywhere, particularly those evil twins: Compromised Objectivity and Biased Conclusions. Of course academia trains us to think, like Hess, that research is worthy only when fully divorced from politics. Our research questions should be derived from theory, stemming only from the reading of great books and dusty...