Services
Consultation services for education researchers and educators.
What is the Professional development for Emerging Education Researchers (PEER) Institute?
The Professional development for Emerging Education Researchers (PEER) Institute helps faculty, postdocs, and graduate students learn how to do education research through intensive workshops, research projects, mentoring, and community involvement. The central activity for PEER is participation in a field school: an intense week of professional development workshops which jumpstart your research project. PEER participants learn to design research projects, collaborate ethically, conduct research, and write papers for peer-reviewed publication.
PEER Participants come from a variety of professional backgrounds:
- discipline-based education researchers looking to expand their methodological repertoire
- disciplinary faculty just getting started on the scholarship of teaching and learning
- education faculty looking to join a research group and access video-based data
- faculty development experts learning to mentor faculty through scholarship of teaching and learning (SoTL) projects
- grad students and postdocs who need mentoring and community support for their research projects
- undergraduate students who attend field schools with their advisors
After field school, some participants continue to work with us as part of a geographically-distributed research group, joining working groups, conducting research together, and submitting papers for publication. PEER participants have published about 150 peer-reviewed papers since 2015.
https://youtu.be/wYVePjWPDoc Our collaborators and hosts at the University of Cologne made a promotional video for their PEER field school.
Upcoming PEER field schools
If you’re lucky enough to live near a regional field school, we recommend you join it! Past regional field schools have been held all over the world and across the US. Upcoming regional schools will be held in the US as well as internationally (as travel permits).
Entrance requirements for regional schools vary; contact Eleanor Sayre or join the announcements list for details.
Can PEER come to me?
Emphatically, yes! We love to travel, and PEER is an excellent way to build community and capacity for education research among the people near you.
A regional field school is usually four or five days. Regional field schools tend to have themes that are appropriate to their participants. For example,
- Rukara 2018 (Rwanda) focused on preparing research for publication
- Cologne 2017-2024 (Germany) focused on equity research and video data
- Vancouver 2019 (Canada) centered around designing and planning SoTL research projects.
- St. Thomas 2021 (US Virgin Islands) focused on strengthening graduate dissertations’ research designs and project plans
- Auburn 2025 (Alabama, US) focused on building community among Auburn education researchers, from graduate students to faculty and staff.
We’ll work with you to make sure our workshops are well-tuned to the things your participants need.
A reasonable number of participants is 20-40, though smaller and larger are definitely possible. You should plan that most of your participants will attend every workshop in the field school. We can also give colloquia, invited talks, or public lectures for larger audiences to help make the most of our visit.
Costs are minimal, but scheduling is complicated. Contact Eleanor Sayre.
I’m an education researcher, and I want to be involved!
Who runs PEER?
Scott V Franklin
Rochester Institute of Technology Professor, School of Physics and Astronomy
Mary Bridget Kustusch
DePaul University Associate Professor Department of Physics
Eleanor C Sayre
Zaposa, LLC
How can I help?
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