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AERA Selects Megan Madigan Peercy for Mid-Career Award

Megan Peercy headshot

The American Educational Research Association (AERA) announced Megan Madigan Peercy as a co-recipient of the organization’s Second Language Research Special Interest Group (SIG) Mid-Career Award. Dr. Peery shares the award with Dr. Lorena Llosa of New York University Steinhardt.

“It's a tremendous honor to receive the AERA Second Language Research SIG Midcareer Award, particularly when I think about how accomplished the recent past recipients are, and how much Dr. Llosa, my co-awardee, has contributed to the field,” Dr. Peercy says. “This award is really a marker of the great mentoring and colleagueship from which I have benefitted, ranging from my early experiences as a doctoral student, to my work at UMD.”

SIGs are subgroups of AERA that focus on a particular subject area. This SIG award recognizes Dr. Peercy’s contributions to the field, including her research in second language teacher education and applied linguistics for school-based language learning, as well as her work advocating for language learners who are often disadvantaged by federal and state policies affecting public schools. Dr. Peercy credits her colleagues for their contributions and support of her work.

“The outstanding doctoral students with whom I work and my amazing collaborators all contribute to pushing my work in what I hope are valuable directions for teachers and linguistically minoritized youth (LMY), most recently through my identification of centrally important practices for teaching LMY, and through my examination of the pedagogies of teacher education for teachers of LMY,” Dr. Peercy says.

As part of accepting the award, Dr. Peercy has been invited to deliver a speech highlighting her work at the 2019 AERA annual meeting in Toronto, Canada. Recently, Dr. Peercy was also awarded a $50,000 grant from the Spencer Foundation to support research focused on novice teachers of English language learners.

Dr. Peercy is an associate professor in the Department of Teaching and Learning, Policy and Leadership.