Center staff and partners presented four papers at the Annual Meeting of the American Educational Research Association (AERA) — the world’s largest education research conference —last week in Denver, Colorado. Scholars from around the globe, including those from leading universities, compete for inclusion, with fewer than half of submissions accepted. We were extremely proud to feature both high school teachers and students on our presentation team at the conference. These crucial stakeholders in education research are rarely seen at AERA, and we felt strongly that they deserve to be heard there and that their contributions make education research better. 

• Two youth participants in the 2023-24 First Ring Student Leadership Institute, Nandi Grant, now a freshmen at the University of Toledo, and Florin Socol-Boeriu, a senior at Brooklyn High School, presented their team's study of the predictors of chronic absenteeism among Ohio high school students. Their paper was co-authored by Center staff Xiaona Jin and Adam Voight and Keith Bell of the Educational Service Center of Northeast Ohio.
• Center postdoctoral research fellow, Rosalinda Godinez co-presented with Maggie Rahill and Emily Mangan, two high school English language arts teachers at John Marshall School of Engineering in the Cleveland Metropolitan School District. They shared findings from their integration of YPAR into their ELA classes through the Center’s Project HighKEY.
• Dr. Godinez also presenters a paper that uses Chicana Feminism Theories to examine how YPAR done in schools creates unique spaces for students to exercise agency and develop critical consciousness. The paper was co-authored by Dr. Voight. Center research assistants
• Katelyne Griffin-Todd, Marissa Panzarella, and Amir Javadi presented qualitative findings from student YPAR participants on factors that foster a sense of ownership over the YPAR process. The paper was co-authored by Dr. Voight. 

These Center presentations were part of Cleveland State University’s School of Education and Counseling's remarkable representation at this year’s conference, with total 23 papers and posters presented — more than any other Ohio institution except Ohio State University and the University of Cincinnati. Twenty-six CSU faculty members and graduate students contributed to this showing.