AERA Dissertation Grants Program

Dissertation Grants Program

American Educational Research Association

Deadline Date: May 15, 2019

Program Objectives

The American Educational Research Association (AERA) seeks proposals for Dissertation Grants. The AERA Grants Program provides advanced graduate students with research funding and professional development and training. The program supports highly competitive dissertation research using rigorous quantitative methods to examine large-scale, education-related data. The aim of the program is to advance fundamental knowledge of relevance to STEM policy, foster significant science using education data, and build research capacity in education and learning. Since 1991, this AERA Program has been vital to both research and training at early career stages.

The Grants Program encourages the use of major data sets from multiple and diverse sources. It emphasizes the advanced statistical analysis of data sets from the U.S. Department of Education’s National Center for Education Statistics (NCES), the National Science Foundation (NSF), and other federal agencies. The program also supports studies using large-scale international data systems (e.g., PISA, PIRLS, or TIMMS) that benefit from U.S. federal government support. In addition, statewide longitudinal administrative data systems (SLDS) enhanced through federal grants are also eligible for consideration. The inclusion of federal or state administrative information that further expands the analytic capacity of the research is permissible. The thrust of the analysis needs to be generalizable to a national, state, or population or a subgroup within the sample that the dataset represents.

The Grants Program is open to field-initiated research and welcomes proposals that:

develop or benefit from advanced statistical or innovative quantitative methods or measures;
analyze more than one large-scale national or international federally funded data set, or more than one statewide longitudinal data system (SLDS) or incorporate other data enhancements;
integrate, link, or blend multiple large-scale data sources; or
undertake replication research of major findings or major studies using large-scale, federally supported or enhanced data.

The Grants Program encourages proposals across the life span and contexts of education and learning of relevance to STEM policy and practice. The research may focus on a wide range of topics, including but not limited to such issues as student achievement in STEM, contextual factors in education, educational participation and persistence (pre-kindergarten through graduate school), early childhood education and development, postsecondary education, and the STEM workforce and transitions. Studies that examine issues of specific racial and ethnic groups, social classes, genders, or persons with disabilities are encouraged.

Eligibility Requirements

Dissertation Grants are available for advanced doctoral students and are intended to support the student while analyzing data and writing the doctoral dissertation. Proposals are encouraged from the full range of education research fields and other fields and disciplines engaged in education-related research, including economics, political science, psychology, sociology, demography, statistics, public policy, and psychometrics. Applicants for this one-year, non-renewable award should be advanced doctoral students at the dissertation writing stage, usually the last year of study. Applicants may be U.S. citizens or U.S. permanent residents enrolled in a doctoral program. Non-U.S. citizens enrolled in a doctoral program at an U.S. institution are also eligible to apply. Underrepresented racial and ethnic minority researchers as well as women, individuals with disabilities, and veterans are strongly encouraged to apply.

Funding Guidelines

Award Component 1, $25,000 Stipend: AERA will award each grantee up to a $25,000 stipend to study education, teaching, learning, or other education research topics using one or multiple large-scale databases. The funds can be used for research-related expenses such as tuition, living expenses, travel to secure data enclaves or scholarly conferences, books, computer equipment, and other expenses directly related to conducting this research. As part of the proposal, applicants provide a budget that outlines anticipated research-related expenses. AERA encourages cost sharing from universities in the form of tuition assistance, office space, university fees, and other expenses. In accordance with AERA’s agreement with NSF, institutions cannot charge overhead or indirect costs to administer the grant funds. In addition to the funding, grantees will be paired with a Governing Board member who will serve as a resource and provide advice and feedback to grantees and monitor grantees’ progress.

In addition to the dissertation grant award, grantees will participate in an AERA research conference held in Washington, DC. During this 2-day conference grantees will participate in seminar-type sessions on substantive, methodological, and professional issues. Also, they will have the opportunity to network and interact with the Grants Program Governing Board, senior scholars and researchers, other graduate students who use large-scale datasets in their research, and representatives from key federal agencies such as the National Center for Educational Statistics, the National Science Foundation, and the U.S. Department of Education. The award will cover all travel and lodging expenses for grantees to participate in the conference.

Each spring AERA holds its Annual Meeting which brings together over 15,000 researchers, scholars, and policy leaders to present their research, share knowledge, and build research capacity through over 2,000 substantive sessions. Grantees will take a data analysis or appropriate methods course while attending the AERA Annual Meeting. The grantees will present their research in an invited poster session along with other graduate students who received dissertation support from AERA and other prestigious fellowship programs. Finally, grantees will participate in a Capstone conference directly after the Annual Meeting that will address issues such as building a research agenda, searching for a faculty appointment, and publishing research. Grantees must include travel and lodging expenses to the Annual Meeting in their budget. (kww)