Prof Irma Eloff, Dean of UP’s Faculty of Education, attended the American Educational Research Association (AERA) Annual Meeting in Chicago from 16 April to 20 April 2015, together with several Faculty staff members.  

The AERA Annual Meeting is the largest gathering of scholars in the field of education research. It is a showcase for ground-breaking, innovative studies in a diverse array of areas -- from early education through to higher education, from digital learning to second language literacy. It is where ideas and data that will shape tomorrow's education practices and policies are generated, and where leading thinkers from around the world connect. 

The 2015 Annual Meeting, with an attendance of more than 14 000, featured over 2 600 sessions. The meeting’s theme, ‘Towards Justice: Culture, Language and Heritage in Education Research and Praxis’, intended to focus on justice in a spirit of mutually respectful collaborative engagement with different disciplines and modes of inquiry in the context of the world around us.

The aim was to make room for democratized knowledge and knowledge production in which the experiences of all people are shaped by principles and practices of justice. When this is achieved, scholarly interests can align more closely with the interests of justice for those who have been and are educationally marginalised, dispossessed, and excluded.

From left: Chair: Prof Karen Murphy (Vice President Division C AERA & Penn State College of Education, Co-Director of the Center for Educational and Developmental Sciences), Prof Liesel Ebersöhn (Symposium Leader & Director Centre for the Study of Resilience, UP), Dr Ruth Mampane (Department of Educational Psycholgy, UP), Dr Funke Omidire (Department of Educational Psycholgy, UP), Mrs Marisa Leask (Postgraduate student, Department of Educational Psycholgy, UP), Prof Irma Eloff (Discussant & Dean Faculty of Education, University of Pretoria), Prof Deslea Konza (Director Fogarty Learning Centre, Edith Cowan University.