MSU at 2026 AERA Annual Meeting

The AERA (American Educational Research Association) Annual Meeting is being hosted at the Los Angeles Convention Center April 8-12, 2026. 

Each year, the AERA Annual Meeting is the world's largest gathering of education researchers and a showcase for groundbreaking, innovative studies in an array of areas. With more than 2,500 sessions to choose from, the 2026 Annual Meeting will provide a dynamic experience with opportunities to learn from prominent scholars, discover the latest research, engage in stimulating conversations, and foster professional relationships. 

 

 

The theme for 2026 is “Unforgetting Histories and Imagining Futures: Constructing a New Vision for Education Research.” From Maisha T. Winn, AERA President, this theme “is an invitation to collectively reflect on how to leverage our disciplinary and methodological diversity in service of unforgetting histories. These histories inform us of our current challenges in education research and shape policies and practices that will enable thriving futures for learners across the lifespan in a range of contexts.” 

MSU mathematics education faculty and graduate students presenting research at this year’s AERA Annual Meeting include Sara Elakesh, Beth Herbel-Eisenmann, Reagin McNeill, and Sabrina Zarza. 

PhD student Sabrina Zarza shared these comments about attending AERA: “This will be my third year attending and presenting at AERA. My first year was extremely daunting and I really struggled to navigate it because it is so large and I hadn’t found community in the field yet. In contrast, my second year (last year) was wonderful! I was able to reconnect with scholars I had met through PRIME’s colloquium series and whose work has really influenced mine. One of these scholars was Dr. Sandra Zuñiga-Ruiz, who also served as an external reviewer on my comps paper which was a systematic literature review on engagements with Chicana Feminist perspectives in Mathematics Education research. While having lunch at AERA, we discussed putting together a symposium for the following year bringing together some of the scholars I reviewed in my comps paper to uplift this work and provide a platform for others to be introduced to how Chicana Feminisms are being taken up in Mathematics Education. We ended up doing exactly that and our proposal was accepted!” Sabrina noted that she and Dr. Zuñiga-Ruiz are co-chairing this symposium, and Dr. Rochelle Guitérrez is serving as the discussant.  

Sabrina continued, “I will be sharing my dissertation work along with three other scholars in the field engaging with Chicana feminist methodologies: Dr. Stacy Jones, Dr. Susana Beltrán-Grimm, and Dr. Daniela Alvarez-Vargas. Our presentation is in the format of a plática, a type of cultural practice of dialogue and co-theorizing through lived experience. Working with this group has been very healing in a moment where the Latine community has been hyper surveilled and criminalized due to anti-immigrant discourse and policies in the U.S. right now. I am looking forward to sharing our work and practices with the AERA community (especially in southern CA, where I am from) and hope it opens space for other scholars to consider healing and (re)imagining futures within research.” 

 

MSU Presentations 

Wednesday, April 8th 

3:45 to 5:15pm PDT (6:45 to 8:15pm EDT), JW Marriott Los Angeles L.A. LIVE, Floor: Ground Floor, Gold 2 

The Role of Cultural Expectations in Middle Eastern/North African Students’ Mathematics Identity 

Sara Elakesh 

 

Friday, April 10th 

11:45am to 1:15pm PDT (2:45 to 4:15pm EDT), JW Marriott Los Angeles L.A. LIVE, Floor: 2nd Floor, Platinum D 

Trenzando Chicana Latina Feminist Perspectives into Mathematics Education (Symposium) 

Pláticas Across Terrains: Navigating Institutional Whiteness in Mathematics Education (Session Paper) 

Sabrina Zarza (and others) 

 

3:45 to 5:15pm PDT (6:45 to 8:15pm EDT), Los Angeles Convention Center, Floor: Level One, Petree D 

Disrupting Architectures of Adultism in Participatory Research 

Beth Herbel-Eisenmann (and others) 

 

Saturday, April 11th  

11:45am to 1:15pm PDT (2:45 to 4:15pm EDT), JW Marriott Los Angeles L.A. LIVE, Floor: Ground Floor, Gold 2 

Enacting Culturally Relevant Pedagogy: Insights from Black Women Mathematics Faculty 

Reagin Taylor McNeill (and one other) 

 

Sunday, April 12th 

7:45 to 9:15am PDT (10:45am to 12:15pm EDT), JW Marriott Los Angeles L.A. LIVE, Floor: 4th Floor, Diamond 9 

Centering Teachers’ Equitable Participation in Professional Development: Partnership Approaches in Chile and the U.S. 

Beth Herbel-Eisenmann (and others)