LSU College of Education Faculty Member to Edit Early Education and Child Development Group’s Newsletter

BATON ROUGE – The American Educational Research Association, or AERA, members of the Early Education and Child Development Special Interest Group, elected LSU College of Education Associate Professor Teresa Buchanan to become editor of the Special Interest Group Executive Committee newsletter. She will serve a three-year term.

The purpose of the AERA Early Education and Child Development Special Interest Group, or SIG, is to promote research that has implications for theory, policy, practice and teacher development in the diverse contexts serving children from birth to age eight. The SIG provides a forum for individuals who share a common interest in research, theory, practice and policies related to early childhood education and child development.

“It is an honor to serve the AERA SIG in this way,” said Buchanan. “I’m especially gratified to be one of three board members from LSU. LSU is well-represented in the National Early Childhood Education leadership.”

Renee Casbergue, interim associate dean for graduate studies and research and Vira Franklin and James R. Eagle Endowed Professor in the LSU College of Education, is a senior member-at-large on the AERA Special Interest Group board. Jennifer Baumgartner, assistant professor in the Family, Child and Consumer Sciences Division of the School of Human Ecology, is completing a term as junior member-at-large.

The AERA is concerned with improving the educational process by encouraging scholarly inquiry related to education and evaluation and by promoting the dissemination and practical application of research results. Its more than 25,000 members are educators, administrators, directors of research, persons working with testing or evaluation in government agencies, counselors, evaluators, graduate students and behavioral scientists.

For more information about AERA and its Early Education and Child Development Special Interest Group, visit http://www.aera.net/.

For more information about early childhood education at LSU, visit http://coe.ednet.lsu.edu/coe//ETPP/pk3/pk3.html.