Welcome to MWERA 2021!
The Power of Educational Research: Impacting Change
October 13-15, 2021
Graduate Hotel, formerly the Kingsgate Conference Center, Cincinnati, OH
The 2021 Annual Meeting of the Mid-Western Educational Research Association (MWERA) will be held at the beautiful Graduate Hotel formerly the Kingsgate Conference Center in Cincinnati, Ohio.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: The Power of Educational Research: Impacting Change
How can we share educational research and impact change? How can we use educational research to inform, persuade, and develop knowledge in our fields of study? The struggle to challenge and reaffirm particular educational practices is at the heart of educational research. 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:
- High-stakes testing
- Social Emotional Learning
- Sustainability
- Schools and mental health issues
- Teacher recruitment, preparation and retention
- Over-identification of students of color and English learners in special education
- School Leadership
- Early Childhood Education
- Governance of curricular decisions
- Higher education
How might we more effectively engage in and utilize educational research that addresses these issues in education? How might we attend to such issues as power and representation? How might we more strategically and holistically distribute findings? How can we use educational research to nourish our minds and facilitate learning? Come to the MWERA conference in Cincinnati in 2021 to explore these issues and more!