The 2025 American Educational Research Association (AERA) Annual Meeting took place over five days in April in Denver, CO, featuring more than 2,500 sessions across a wide range of education research topics. This event brought together prominent scholars and emerging voices committed to advancing the field, including over 90 Boston College Lynch School of Education and Human Development faculty members and doctoral students who participated in the event. As one of the largest national research societies in education, AERA seeks to generate knowledge that improves education for the public good.

This year’s theme, “Research, Remedy, and Repair: Toward Just Education Renewal,” shaped a dynamic program of keynote addresses, lectures, and sessions focused on pressing issues in education research, policy, and practice. Lynch School scholars contributed through paper presentations, poster symposia, and roundtable discussions that fostered collaboration and shared inquiry across disciplines and institutions—locally and globally.

Check out the complete list of Lynch School awards and presentations given at AERA 2025. Highlighted below are just a few presentations given by members of the Lynch School community. 

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Cultural Context Matters: How Sociocultural Factors Affect Math Achievement Across Countries

Analyzing TIMSS 2019 data, Professor Lillie R. Albert of the Teaching, Curriculum, and Society Department, along with Ph.D. student Kyunghoon Son ’25 (Curriculum and Instruction), sought to understand how sociocultural constructs influence students' math outcomes in the U.S., Finland, Singapore, and South Korea. Their presentation, highlighting a hierarchical linear regression analysis, found that socioeconomic status universally influenced achievement, but other predictors—like classroom environment or career interest—varied significantly by country. These findings caution against one-size-fits-all education reform and argue for culturally tailored strategies to improve math performance globally.

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Using Machine Learning to Understand Student Behavior on International Assessments

Zhushan “Mandy” Li, an associate professor in the Measurement, Assessment, Statistics, and Evaluation Department, and Ph.D. student Jihang Chen ’25 (Measurement, Assessment, Statistics, and Evaluation) explored how machine learning techniques can enhance our understanding of student engagement with reading tasks in Singapore’s PIRLS 2021 digital assessment. The team employed collaborative filtering, autoencoders, and K-means clustering to extract behavioral patterns and group students accordingly. Their findings revealed strong associations between test-taking behaviors and reading performance, offering promising evidence that advanced data analysis could yield more nuanced educational insights.

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Enacting Translanguaging Pedagogies Amid Unequal Linguistic Resources

In a paper presentation, Assistant Professor Faythe Beauchemin of the Teaching, Curriculum, and Society Department shared findings from a classroom-based study investigating how teachers navigate translanguaging pedagogy when faced with limited instructional resources in students’ non-English languages. Centering on a second-grade classroom where Marshallese was spoken, Beauchemin reframed the lack of pedagogical tools not just as a logistical challenge, but as a question of linguistic justice. The study examined how one teacher adapted her literacy curriculum to equitably include a marginalized language, shedding light on how linguistic personhood is shaped—and sometimes constrained—within educational spaces.

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Resilience and Voice: Chinese International Students’ Digital Stories of the Pandemic

An interdisciplinary research team—led by Dean Stanton Wortham, Professor Deoksoon Kim, and Katrina Borowiec, M.A. ’10 (Higher Education), Ph.D. ’24 (Measurement, Evaluation, Statistics, and Assessment)—explored how Chinese international students in the U.S. experienced remote learning during the COVID-19 pandemic. Using digital storytelling, interviews, and case study methods, the research captured students’ resilience amid cultural and technological challenges. Participants used music, visuals, and narration to articulate their vulnerabilities and growth, positioning storytelling as a powerful tool for reflection, empowerment, and cross-cultural understanding.

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Strengths, Challenges, and Resources Across Schools in a Midwest State

A group of researchers from the Mary E. Walsh Center for Thriving Children partnered with a Midwest state education agency to better understand how schools support historically underserved students. Through a statewide principal survey, the group gathered insights into the strengths, needs, and barriers schools face in meeting student needs. Their findings, presented at a roundtable session by Survey Researcher Nan Yang and Director of Research and Evaluation Yan Leigh, offer a clearer picture of how out-of-school factors like poverty shape student success and highlight how school leaders are working to respond using the resources available to them. Other contributors included: Lead Evaluation Researcher Kathleen Trong Drucker, B.A. ’04 (Human Development), Ph.D. ’09 (Measurement, Evaluation, Statistics, and Assessment), Red Paulin, M.S. ’25 (Applied Statistics and Psychometrics), Gia Pedro, M.A. ’24 (Research and Evaluation Methods), and Professor Emerita Mary Walsh of the Counseling, Developmental, and Educational Psychology Department.

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Can We Move the Needle? Evaluating a Multicomponent Reading Program for Multilingual Learners

Professor C. Patrick Proctor (Teaching, Curriculum, and Society Department) presented early results from a multi-year study on a multicomponent reading program targeting fourth and fifth-grade multilingual students. The program, which integrates vocabulary, morphology, syntax, and dialogic discussions of texts, showed statistically significant gains in both English language development and reading comprehension—especially for students with lower initial skill levels. The research emphasizes that, to close achievement gaps, instructional design must allow students to draw from their full linguistic repertoires.

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Bridging, Belonging, and Bilingualism in Catholic Schools

John Reyes, the director of research, program evaluation, and innovation for the Boston College Roche Center for Catholic Education, presented research that studied how dual language bilingual education (DLBE) Catholic schools in the U.S. recruit and retain teachers. Drawing on survey data from over 100 educators, the team found that DLBE schools tend to attract a more diverse teaching workforce and foster a strong sense of inclusion and collaboration. The research co-authored by Roche Center team members Michael T. O’Connor, Ph.D. ’17 (Curriculum and Instruction) and Elena Sada highlight how school culture—especially one grounded in equity and belonging—can influence teacher satisfaction and shape who stays in the classroom.

Lynch School Reception

Hosted annually as part of the yearly AERA convening, the Boston College Lynch School of Education and Human Development’s reception was widely attended by members of the Lynch School community, including faculty, staff, graduate students, and administration.

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