Welcome to MWERA 2019!
Research for Advocacy
October 16-18, 2019
Kingsgate Conference Center, Cincinnati, OH

The 2019 Annual Meeting of the Mid-Western Educational Research Association (MWERA) will be held at the beautiful Kingsgate Conference Center in Cincinnati, Ohio. This is our second year at this scenic, stylish well-situated location. The hotel will provide us with spacious and well-equipped meeting facilities and plenty of common spaces for networking with fellow MWERA members. Additionally, the conference center is a short walk to the Cincinnati Zoo and about ten minutes to downtown, so a short bus or Uber ride away from the Ohio River, National Underground Freedom Center, Over-the-Rhine, Cincinnati Museum Center at Union Terminal, and the Banks.

This year we invite all scholars, professionals, students, practitioners, and administrators — to join us in a friendly and collegial atmosphere as we connect around the issues and problems that are important to us as educational professionals. There will be opportunities to learn, reflect, make new connections, and renew old acquaintances. Prepare to be energized by attending MWERA!

Conference Theme: Research for Advocacy
How can we use educational research for advocacy? John Dewey argued that educational researchers should democratically engage with the public to advance educational progress through science. As educational researchers, we have the responsibility to not only create and disseminate research for the public good but to do so in a manner by which the public may then use our research to support their advocacy. The Mid-Western Educational Research Association would like to provide this conference as an opportunity for educational researchers to collaborate with colleagues, graduate students, undergraduate students, P-12 teachers, administrators, school boards, state boards of education, legislators, unions, non-profits, and other educational stakeholder organizations to engage in innovative and perhaps even non-traditional scientific inquiry for the purpose of social progress through advocacy. We welcome presentations that include the dissemination of educational research through new forms of engagement in public spaces such as editorials, speeches, government testimonies, social media commentary, blog posts, podcasts, videos, wikis, etc.

To better meet the needs of a diverse body of educational stakeholders, educational researchers must choose activities that position research to inform civic participation, engagement, and organized action. Moreover, we may need to go beyond our characteristic publication possibilities so that what we learn is disseminated in a way that may be accessed by those inside and outside of our traditional paradigms. Of particular interest to the conference theme, we seek proposals that address the most immediate advocacy needs:

• Immigration
• Gun Violence Prevention
• Social Emotional Development
• English Learners
• Child Nutrition and Health Care
• Every Student Succeeds Act Implementation
• Early Childhood Education
• Higher Education
• Worker's Rights

How might we more effectively engage in and utilize educational research that addresses the necessity of advocacy? How might we better negotiate our traditional paradigms for the creation and dissemination of research? How might we begin to collaborate with diverse and unique educational stakeholders? How might we more strategically and holistically disseminate findings? Please join us at the 2019 MWERA Conference in Cincinnati, Ohio, to explore these issues and more!