AERA Division J Blog

Anyone is invited to submit material for consideration, and submissions will be reviewed on an ongoing basis. We hope to receive material from graduate students, faculty members, and practitioners.

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Looking: Using Proximity-Based Dating Apps like Grindr and Scruff for Participant Recruitment in Education and the Social Sciences

Nick Havey Looking (for research participants)? Consider “the Apps” If you’re familiar with the HBO series Looking, which explores very white queer life in San Francisco, or have used a dating app in the last 10 years, you might know “looking” as a one-word interrogative that says a lot. It mostly is meant as a lazy (or efficient) way of asking another user if they’re interested in casual sex, but you might be “looking” for research participants! Having a baseline understanding of how dating apps work is prerequisite for using them for research purposes, as understanding terms like “looking” and app-based norms can help researchers navigate confusing virtual spaces and build trust and rapport with potential participants. I have used proximity-based dating apps as recruitment sites for two different research projects. One considers the state of queer sexual education and how queer collegians are responding to sex educations that were not inclusive of their experiences or desi...

Black Thriving and Flourishing in Higher Education: The Imperative for a New Research Agenda

By Agyemang Amofa Prempeh & Dr. Sydney Freeman, Jr. Black people continue to face significant challenges in higher education. The Underrepresentation of Black students in colleges and universities and a lack of Black faculty and administrators highlight the pressing need for targeted initiatives to foster Black thriving and flourishing on campuses. While valuable research has been conducted on concepts such as Black joy and a sense of belonging, a comprehensive research agenda on Black thriving and flourishing in higher education is still lacking. A research agenda on Black thriving and flourishing will provide a comprehensive approach to correct the existing disparities faced by Black students, faculty, staff, and administrators at predominately White institutions (PWIs). Such a research agenda may also lead to developing strategies that, when implemented, facilitate higher education campuses where Black people can reach their fullest potential academically and professio...

A Focus on Rural Student Strengths: Dismantling Deficit Thinking and Language on Rurality in Higher Education

Ty C. McNamee, Assistant Professor, University of Mississippi In recent years, issues that for decades have plagued rural areas have been front-and-center in mainstream news outlets, such as high rates of poverty, declining population, fewer white-collar job opportunities, and comparatively lower levels of educational success. Such issues impact rural students’ higher education attainment, a topic that news media have appeared to notice with headlines such as: “ Colleges Discover the Rural Student ,” “ The Rural Higher-Education Crisis ,” and “ For Colleges, A Rural Reckoning .” Each piece highlighted rural youth holding some of the lowest college attainment rates in the country , compared to other geographic locales. These pieces put rural students at the forefront of higher education conversations for the first time in decades. Unfortunately, much of the discussion surrounding rural Americans frames their lives and educational experiences as deficient. In turn, my co-research...

On the Imperative of Differentiating Between Student Experiences, Learning, and Development in the Third Wave of Development Research

Antonio Duran, Ph.D., Assistant Professor, Higher and Postsecondary Education, Division of Educational Leadership and Innovation, Arizona State University The first time I took a college student development class was as an undergraduate student at New York University as they were piloting a course titled, “Who are You and Why are You Here?” I remember feelings of excitement as I learned about the fact that there were theories describing how college students explored formative questions of the self and of their identities as they moved through life, theories that would inform one’s work in higher education settings. This enthusiasm carried over as I took another student development theory class as a master’s student at Miami University where I deepened my understanding of the development journeys of those in college. And yet, as I got deeper into this research, the questions I had grew (probably a good sign of my own learning, and perhaps...

Feeling Toward a Pedagogy of Grief

Z Nicolazzo, Ph.D., Associate Professor, Center for the Study of Higher Education, University of Arizona Throughout the past two years, I have found myself periodically returning to a piece Alexander Chee (2020) wrote for The New York Times . In it, Chee discusses the parallels between the COVID-19 pandemic and the AIDS epidemic. When the piece was first published, I remember taking a long walk with a friend and talking about it. We both had vivid memories and personal connections to AIDS and were both trying to make sense of what was happening globally as COVID-19 ripped through communities. In one especially heart-rending moment in the column, Chee recounts a conversation with a friend who, in response to the rising death toll, shared, “‘I’m acknowledging them [the deaths], but I’m not feeling them, just like the old days. …That comes later’” (para. 8). That conversation between Chee and his friend was two months into the pandemic. We’re now over two years in, which woul...

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