Dr. Clay to serve as co-facilitator at AERA presidential panel
Kevin L. Clay, assistant professor in the VCU School of Education’s Department of Foundations of Education, will serve as a co-facilitator during a prestigious presidential panel at the upcoming American Educational Research Association (AERA) 2021 Virtual Annual Meeting.
The interactive panel session, titled From the Margins to the Center: Interrogating the Precarity and Possibility of Community-based Youth Work in Challenging Times, will bring together scholars, youth work practitioners, community-based leaders, and youth organizers to chart a plan to fill research gaps, tackle critical policy issues, and share valuable strategies for youth programming. The event will be held from 11:10 a.m. to 12:40 p.m. ET on Monday, April 12.
Following the panel discussion, the audience will be divided into several small group conversations facilitated by scholars of youth work, youth workers, and local organizers and youth advocates around a variety of issues within the field of youth work.
Clay will co-lead the small group discussion on Confronting Programmatic Power Structures through Youth Activism. Group leaders will guide conversation about the intersections of race, class, sexuality and gender within community-based youth work, as well as explore how these dynamics shape youth-adult partnerships for organizing and activism for educational liberation.
Clay’s research interests include Critical Black Studies in Education, local change theory and praxis, critical/political education, youth political identity, and urban (educational) policy reform.
AERA’s 2021 Virtual Annual Meeting is being held April 8-12. According to AERA, these meetings represent the world's largest gathering of education researchers and a showcase for groundbreaking, innovative studies in an array of areas.
Registration information and rates for the meeting, including the April 12 presidential panel, are located on the AERA website here.