Nominations are now open for the 2024 Jan Hawkins Award for Early Career Contributions to Humanistic Research and Scholarship in Learning Technologies, AERA Division C
SUBMISSION DEADLINE IS JANUARY 24, 2024
Dr. Jan Hawkins (1952-1999) was a developmental psychologist with a cognitive, cultural, and social-interactionist orientation, and was well known for her respectful, humanistic conceptions of appropriate roles for using technology in K-12 learning environments. Her work illustrates the balance that can be achieved in recognizing the innovative, emergent properties of new technologies while simultaneously respecting the individuals and conditions of the learning environments in which these new technologies are being used. She also was concerned with how complex social systems interact with emerging technologies to provide or prevent access to information for various groups of people based on gender, race, and cultural and ethnic background. Her work helped researchers, practitioners, and policy makes alike to think critically about technologies and learning, encouraging them not to seek out technology as a panacea or avoid it as a deterministic influence. She was also exemplary in her nurturing of young research scholars in learning technologies, and has been a model for them through her research and leadership.
This award recognizes an early-career individual or small collaborative team that is engaged in research that combines practice and advocacy. While research must play a central, informative role in the work of the nominee, the nominated individual or group may include practitioners, directors of innovative educational programs or individuals in informal or non-traditional educational environments.
The award is intended to recognize a body of work that:
explores and demonstrates powerful new ways to think about technologies in contexts of learning and education, and uses innovative research methods to understand the impact of those technologies.
places young people and/or practicing educators at the center of the problem-solving process by making their meaning-making process, their needs and constraints, and their priorities central to the project
strikes an effective balance between innovation -- inventing new approaches to K-12 learning with technologies -- and understanding -- examining existing educational environments and changes that occur when technologies are introduced
uses technology to bring about broad improvements in educational systems by addressing equity, diversity, relations of power, and/or learning for all.
is relevant and responsive to the current social context where society is looking to new technologies to address the landscape of education transformed by the pandemic and fighting systemic racism
Nomination Process and Award Information
The Jan Hawkins Award of Division C of the American Educational Research Association is given for Early Career Contributions to Humanistic Research and Scholarship in Learning Technologies. The award is an early-career contribution with the above orientations and as such will emphasize recognition for those individuals who are at the pre-tenure stage in academic careers, or pre-tenure-level equivalents in non-university contexts. The award carries a stipend of $500, a plaque, and the opportunity to present a talk at the award session at AERA in the following year.
Any member of Division C may make a nomination, including self-nominations. The recipient(s) of the award need not belong to Division C.
The nomination process includes the following information:
1) LETTER: A nomination letter introducing the nominee or small team, detailing how this nominee’s work relates to the themes identified above (including how the work combines research and advocacy).
2) VITA: The vita of the nominee (for individual nominations) or a description of the team, its history, and a vita for team members (for small group nominations).
3) REPRESENTATIVE WORK: One to three examples of written work (research papers, publications, etc.) that demonstrate the key contributions of the nominee's recent research. The submission may also include supplemental documentation or examples such as videos, project URLs, software, etc., if applicable. For a small group, the examples of representative work should consist of collaborative work authored by the team.
Please assemble and submit these materials as email attachments in commonly shared formats (MS-WORD, PDF) to PG Schrader (pg.schrader@unlv.edu) with “Jan Hawkins Award” in the subject header.
The submission deadline is Sunday January 24, 2024.