The world’s largest association of education researchers tackles the vital work of “unforgetting” and “futuring”
Last year, I worried that a glitchy chatbot had seized control of the American Education Research Association (AERA). Billing itself as the world’s largest organization of education researchers, AERA had issued a presidential call for conference papers that was so full of inhuman gibberish that I couldn’t imagine actual humans were still behind the keyboard.
In some ways, it wasn’t surprising. I mean, this is an organization that has too often traded its scholarly mantle for a political one. And it just recently made a point of hiring, as its new executive director, the head of University of Michigan’s bloated, much-maligned, and now-shuttered DEI behemoth.
Well, they’re at it again. Just the other day, the description of AERA’s 2026 annual conference hit my inbox, and it had me worried for a different reason—that I just couldn’t tell whether the banal, vacuity was the handiwork of a real human or of low-grade AI. When esteemed scholars become hard to distinguish from a busted algorithm, it raises ugly questions about the value of education research.
Anyway, I dusted off my modified Turing Test and got busy interrogating the description of the 2026 conference program in order to gauge whether the prose reads like the product of actual human beings. (This isn’t made up, I fear—the web page features all this text, verbatim.)
Rick: Can you start us off with a catchy epigraph that distills the theme of next year’s conference?
AERA Presidential Program (APP): “‘There is no separation between past and present, meaning that an alternative future is also determined by our understanding of our past. Our history is the future.’ —Nick Estes, 2019”
Rick: Wow! That sounds profound but is utterly meaningless. What a great quote.
Rick: There’s obviously a lot of concern about academic malaise, chronic absenteeism, and college costs. Given all the possibilities, what will next year’s AERA conference focus on?
APP: “The 2026 annual meeting theme is an invitation to collectively reflect on how to leverage our disciplinary and methodological diversity in service of unforgetting histories.”
Rick: Why is “unforgetting histories” so useful?
APP: “These histories inform 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.”
Rick: Is there a particular kind of inquiry you’re hoping to encourage?
APP: “We invite students, educators, practitioners, and researchers to engage in futuring for education and education research.” [emphasis in original]
Rick: Just to be clear, are you more interested in “futuring” or in “unforgetting”?
APP: “Imagining and planning for the future is not solely about looking ahead. An important first step is looking back to look forward, being intentional about examining historical frameworks that can inform future norms we seek to give shape to, and nurture.”
Rick: That’s pretty abstract. Can you give me an example of questions that researchers might latch onto?
APP: “What could happen if education researchers take a ‘long path’ approach by ‘thinking and feeling beyond our individual life spans’? . . . Through which intersections of our research, practice, and partnerships will we prioritize and invest in futuring for education and education research in the sites and systems of formal and informal education that we choose to research?”
Rick: How does the emphasis on “histories” and “futures” relate to improving educational outcomes?
APP: “Any discussion about histories and futures should not elude current national and global concerns that can impede our ability to imagine and plan for education futures. Our deeply divided social and political terrain—both nationally and globally—reinvigorates questions about how to support teaching and learning communities with the skills of civic reasoning and discourses.”
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Rick: Is there a particular kind of civic reasoning and discourse that you’d like to see?
APP: “Harm and wrongdoing across education spaces—both in and out of school—suggest an urgent need for future-oriented restorative and transformative dialogue that can support empirical, conceptual, and applied research.”
Rick: The recent cuts to the Institute of Education Sciences have fueled much discussion about the rigor and utility of education research. Given that, are there particular kinds of expertise you’re really hoping to see?
APP: “Nondominant communities have long engaged in active re-imagining of their lives and their children’s education, because institutions and institutional dynamics have so often isolated or excluded their ingenuity . . . This call thus invites scholars and practitioners to consider the expertise of Indigenous, BIPOC, and LGBTQ communities in innovating for equitable futures, and maps that already exist, from prior generations who grappled similarly with teaching and learning for future thriving and preparing future generations.”
Rick: What kind of research are you looking for when it comes to literacy or numeracy?
Rick: Okay, then. If not literacy or numeracy, what are your priorities?
APP: “We seek proposals that offer a new vision of education research as an intentional process and practice of futuring, through engagement with historical pasts and current tensions and challenges. How can we address our most pressing education challenges through inter- and trans-disciplinary dialogue? What kinds of dialogue can we inspire when including historical perspectives on topics in proposed symposiums? How can we organize our findings with a keen eye on the past, present, and future?”
Rick: Umm, that didn’t help as much as I’d hoped. Can you offer some specific topics of interest?
APP: “Teaching and learning in an era of polycrisis; neurodiversity and ability justice; climate justice and sustainability; restorative and transformative justice; equity-oriented scholarship examining intersectionality of race, class, gender identity, and abilities; Los Angeles and California as examples of rich local histories of education and equitable and thriving futures.”
Reading back over the conversation, I get the frightening sensation that it doesn’t matter whether this is AI or not. Regardless of who or what wrote this, the ludicrous, unintelligible virtue signaling is equally inhuman. That’s true whether the prose was spit out by a random word generator or labored over by a posturing academic. And, if this really is the president of the association representing America’s educational researchers, at a moment when they’re desperately trying to explain why they deserve vast sums of public support, it’s a searing indictment of the field.
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