Katie Walker's dissertation earns 2019 American Educational Research Association award

Katie Walker, assistant professor of foundations, curriculum and instruction in the College of Education, is the 2019 American Educational Research Association (AERA) winner for the Middle-Level Education Research Graduate Student Award for her dissertation. As part of this award, she is invited to present her research at the AERA annual conference this April in Toronto, Canada.

Her dissertation, "Texas Schools to Watch and middle-level ESL programs: A multiple case study" (2017), was a qualitative multiple-case study sought to describe the approaches middle schools recognized as Texas Schools to Watch campuses used to meet the needs of their unique English as a Second Language (ESL) populations.

This is Walker's second year at CCU. 

"I am thrilled and humbled to be recognized by the AERA MLER SIG," she said. "This is one of the few organizations that is dedicated to research in middle-grades education and I am grateful for the opportunity to have my research recognized by this distinguished group of scholars."

AERA is a national research society that strives to advance knowledge about education, to encourage scholarly inquiry related to education, and to promote the use of research to improve education and serve the public good. It is the largest national interdisciplinary research association devoted to the scientific study of education and learning.

In receiving this award, Walker has been given a very prestigious acknowledgment of her research work, said Ed Jadallah, dean of the College of Education.