Grants to USA doctoral candidates for educational research related to STEM practice. Funding is intended for professional development and high-level research on STEM-related educational issues through the analysis of information from extensive national or international data sets.

Dissertation Grants are available for advanced doctoral students and are intended to support the student while analyzing data and writing the doctoral dissertation. Proposals are encouraged from the full range of education research fields and other fields and disciplines engaged in education-related research, including economics, political science, psychology, sociology, demography, statistics, public policy, and psychometrics.

The Grants Program is open to field-initiated research and welcomes proposals that:

1. Develop or benefit from advanced statistical or innovative quantitative methods or measures;
2. Analyze more than one large-scale national or international federally funded data set, or more than one statewide longitudinal data system (SLDS) or incorporate other data enhancements;
3. Integrate, link, or blend multiple large-scale data sources; or
4. Undertake replication research of major findings or major studies using large-scale, federally supported or enhanced data.

The Grants Program encourages proposals across the life span and contexts of education and learning of relevance to STEM policy and practice. The research may focus on a wide range of topics, including but not limited to such issues as student achievement in STEM, contextual factors in education, educational participation and persistence (pre-kindergarten through graduate school), early childhood education and development, postsecondary education, and the STEM workforce and transitions. Studies that examine issues of specific racial and ethnic groups, social classes, genders, or persons with disabilities are encouraged.

The research project must include the analysis of large-scale data. The data set can originate from one or multiple sources, including (1) federal data bases, (2) federally supported national studies, (3) international data sets supported by federal funds, or (4) statewide longitudinal administrative data systems (SLDS) enhanced through federal grants. For more information on data set eligibility, see the URL for Full Text link below.

Award Components:

• Award Component 1, $27,500 Stipend. AERA will award each grantee up to a $27,500 stipend to study education, teaching, learning, or other education research topics using one or multiple large-scale databases. The funds can be used for research-related expenses such as tuition, living expenses, travel to secure data enclaves or scholarly conferences, books, computer equipment, and other expenses directly related to conducting this research. 
• Award Component 2, AERA Research Conference. Grantees will participate in an AERA research conference held in Washington, DC. During this 2-day conference, grantees will participate in seminar-type sessions on substantive, methodological, and professional issues.  Also, they will have the opportunity to network and interact with the Grants Program Governing Board, senior scholars and researchers, other graduate students who use large-scale datasets in their research, and representatives from key federal agencies
• Award Component 3, AERA Annual Meeting Capstone Research Institute. Each spring AERA holds its Annual Meeting which brings together over 15,000 researchers, scholars, and policy leaders to present their research, share knowledge, and build research capacity through over 2,000 substantive sessions. Grantees will take a data analysis or appropriate methods course while attending the AERA Annual Meeting. The grantees will present their research in an invited poster session along with other graduate students who received dissertation support from AERA and other prestigious fellowship programs.

For more information about the three components of the program, see the URL for Full Text link below.