ANNOUNCEMENT: AERA SIG 41 – NAME CHANGE

Posted by American Education Research Association (AERA) on July 19, 2022

As the Executive Leadership Team of AERA SIG41, we are excited to share with you that on Friday, June 17, 2022, AERA Council unanimously approved the petition to change our name from the Service-Learning and Experiential Education SIG to Experiential Education and Community Engagement: Scholarship and Practice SIG. We believe that this name is more congruent with the current direction of the field, the work of our membership, as well as our mission as a SIG:

As a SIG, we are dedicated to bringing together researchers, practitioners, students, and community partners to build and promote understanding and practice of PK-20 experiential education for the betterment of the field and the betterment of society, both in the United States and abroad. We are committed to highlighting experiential education-focused research and conceptual papers and sessions that are scholarly, inclusive, and representative of a wide-range of disciplines, perspectives, and lived experiences, including the scholarship of high-impact practices such as service-learning, global education, community-engaged research, and civic education.

For those of you who are new to our SIG, we would like to provide a brief history behind the process that brought about the name change. In August of 2021, there was a motion made to the SIG041 Executive Committee to change our name from “Service-learning and Experiential Education,” to something that more fully expressed the evolving context and language of community engagement in education and our commitment to creating inclusive spaces that prioritize belonging among our diverse membership. We sought the input of our members through a survey, which was released late August of 2021, and we created a Work Group Committee, who reviewed, synthesized, and presented relevant research that would help our SIG and the AERA Council make an informed decision about our name. Their research was submitted to AERA Council in the early part of 2022, and the Council voted unanimously in support of the name change in June 2022. This new name is effective immediately.

Our Executive Committee would like to acknowledge and thank everyone who participated in the process, including all those who contributed to the survey late August 2021, participants at this year’s business meeting (especially the insights of Dr. Amy Bintliff and graduate student Rebecca Levine from UC-San Diego), and importantly our Work Group Committee members, Drs. Carmine Perrotti, Heather Coffey and Andrew Furco. We are grateful for your time, your research, and your strong proposal. For those who have not had an opportunity to review the contributions of these members, we invite you to explore relevant material in this Google folder.

We hope you’ll share this news with your networks (graduate students and early-career scholars are encouraged), and invite them to join us in this important work in experiential education and community engagement. View the AERA membership page for general and/or new membership information and incentives. To subscribe to our SIG newsletter, click HERE, and please check out our social media page and our podcast, Experiential Commons.

Please feel free to contact us at aerasig041@gmail.com with any questions or concerns as we are eager to support our current members and new colleagues in these efforts.