The American Educational Research Association has announced its 2026 award recipients — and six Black scholars are among the honorees, recognized for work that is directly shaping how this country understands education, race, and student achievement at every level of schooling.
The American Educational Research Association announced the winners of its 2026 awards for excellence in education research. “We are honored to recognize the recipients of the 2026 awards, an outstanding and inspiring group of education researchers and leaders,” said AERA Executive Director Tabbye Chavous. “Their contributions continue to advance education research and positively impact countless students, educators, and the environments in which they live, learn, and work.”
The 2026 AERA Annual Meeting theme — “Unforgetting Histories and Imagining Futures: Constructing a New Vision for Education Research” — is “an invitation to collectively reflect on how to leverage our disciplinary and methodological diversity in service of unforgetting histories.” The honorees will be recognized at the Awards Ceremony Luncheon at the 2026 Annual Meeting in Los Angeles on April 9.
The six Black scholars recognized this cycle represent institutions across the country — the University of Pennsylvania, Florida State University, Vanderbilt University, Ohio State University, and the University of Illinois at Chicago. Their fields span early childhood literacy, STEM education equity, Black male achievement, and the conditions that shape whether or not Black students persist and thrive in school. Their recognition, in a moment when education equity work is under institutional and political pressure nationwide, carries weight that goes far beyond the individual.
Vivian Gadsden: A Lifetime of Fighting for Children and Families
Vivian Gadsden, the William T. Carter Professor Emerita of Child Development and Education at the University of Pennsylvania, won two awards: the 2026 Distinguished Contributions to Research in Education Award and the 2026 Dr. Felice J. Levine Distinguished Contributions to Mentoring in Research and Leadership Award. At Penn’s Graduate School of Education, she serves as co-faculty director of the Penn Early Childhood and Family Research Center.
Dr. Gadsden’s research, scholarly interests, and writing focus on learning and literacies across the life-course and address issues of equity, access, and change for young children and families in historically marginalized communities. Her collaborative research projects draw upon interdisciplinary frameworks that examine early childhood development, parenting, and families; father engagement in urban settings; social factors affecting health and education; children of incarcerated parents; and intergenerational learning within African American and Latino families.
An HBCU graduate, Dr. Gadsden received her bachelor’s degree in psychology and English from Fisk University in Nashville. She holds a doctorate in educational psychology and policy from the University of Michigan.
The mentoring award carries particular meaning in the current landscape. The pipeline of Black researchers in education depends not only on producing scholarship but on senior scholars who actively invest in building the next generation of voices in the field. Dr. Gadsden has served as president of the American Educational Research Association and chair of the National Academies of Sciences Committee on Parenting Young Children, and her national impact has resulted in her regular presence on the Education Week Edu-Scholar Public Influence Rankings list.
Nicole Patton Terry: Bridging Research and the Classroom
Nicole Patton Terry, the Olive & Manuel Bordas Professor in the School of Teacher Education at Florida State University, received the 2026 Exemplary Contributions to Practice-Engaged Research Award. Dr. Terry currently directs Florida State’s Florida Center for Reading Research and is the founding director of The Urban Child Study and The Village, where researchers collaborate with school and community partners to promote student success. Her research, innovation, and engagement activities concern young learners who are vulnerable to experiencing difficulty with language and literacy achievement in school.
Dr. Terry’s recognition speaks directly to a problem that persists across generations: Black children are disproportionately identified as struggling readers, and the interventions designed to support them are too often developed without deep partnership with the communities they serve. Her work operates differently — collaborative, community-grounded, and driven by accountability to real outcomes for real children.
Dr. Terry earned her bachelor’s degree in human communication sciences, her master’s degree in learning disabilities, and her Ph.D. in communication sciences and disorders from Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois.
Chezare A. Warren: Art, Research, and Black Student Wellbeing
Chezare A. Warren, associate professor of education policy and of teaching and learning at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, received the 2026 Scholars in Education Mid-Career Contribution Award. A former secondary math teacher and school administrator in Chicago, Dr. Warren centers his research on understanding the conditions that enable Black students’ education success and wellbeing. He is the principal investigator of THE POSSIBILITIES PROJECT, an “arts-informed knowledge hub” that generates, accumulates, and disseminates research useful for advancing evidence-based Black education solutions.
The Possibilities Project’s approach — weaving together arts-based methodology with rigorous research — reflects an understanding that Black student wellbeing cannot be reduced to test scores or discipline data. It requires understanding how young people construct identity, navigate systems, and find — or fail to find — spaces where they feel they belong.
James L. Moore III: Serving Black Men and Boys Across a Career
James L. Moore III, the Distinguished Professor of Urban Education in the College of Education and Human Ecology at Ohio State University, received the 2026 Distinguished Public Service Award. An Ohio State faculty member for over two decades, Dr. Moore is currently on loan to the U.S. National Science Foundation, serving as the assistant director for its Directorate of STEM Education. His scholarship centers on the experiences of African American men in both K-12 and higher education settings, as well as other societal domains. Dr. Moore is an HBCU graduate, holding a bachelor’s degree in English education from Delaware State University.
Dr. Moore’s placement at the National Science Foundation matters: it means his perspective — rooted in decades of research on what African American men and boys need from educational systems — is now shaping federal STEM education policy at the national level.
Terrell R. Morton: Centering Black Students in STEM
Terrell R. Morton, associate professor of identity and justice in STEM education in the department of educational psychology at the University of Illinois at Chicago, received the 2026 Scholars of Color in Education Early Career Contribution Award. As a scholar-activist, Dr. Morton focuses his research and work on identity as it informs the persistence and engagement of racially minoritized students in STEM postsecondary education. Drawing from critical race theory, phenomenology, and human development insights, he examines Black students’ consciousness and how it manifests in their various embodiments and actions that facilitate their engagement in STEM education. Dr. Morton received his bachelor’s degree in chemistry from historically Black North Carolina A&T State University.
The Sixth Honoree and What the Recognition Means
The sixth Black scholar recognized was included in the JBHE report as part of this year’s awards cycle. Together, the six honorees span career stages — from early career to emerita — and institutional affiliations that stretch coast to coast. They represent not a single moment of achievement but decades of sustained, consequential work.
AERA’s Palmer O. Johnson Memorial Award — which recognizes outstanding journal articles — was also awarded this year to researchers whose published work examined discipline disparities affecting Black students specifically. The recognition of that scholarship alongside these individual honorees reflects an organization that is, at least in this moment, centering research that fights for Black students rather than around them.
The work these six scholars have produced — on literacy, family culture, STEM identity, early childhood, and the conditions of Black student wellbeing — is the foundation upon which better schools must be built. Their recognition is a reminder that the research exists. The question is whether the systems that shape American education will use it.
