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SP2 Associate Professor Named Recipient of Outstanding Book Award

Ezekiel Dixon-Roman at his book launch and discussion in fall 2017.

Authored by: Jessica Bautista

Photography by: Jessica Bautista

Faculty & Research

04/03/18

The results are in and the American Educational Research Association’s (AERA) Outstanding Book Award goes to associate professor Ezekiel Dixon-Román, PhD, for his newest publication, Inheriting Possibility: Social Reproduction and Quantification in Education.

AERA, the largest national interdisciplinary research association devoted to the scientific study of education and learning, announced the winners of its 2018 awards for excellence in education research in April 2018. According to the association, the Outstanding Book Award was established to acknowledge and honor the year’s best book-length publication in education research and development.

Dixon-Román’s publication, released in fall 2017, explores the dualism of nature and culture that has undergirded theories of inheritance, social reproduction, and human learning and development. Through analyses of empirical data and cultural artifacts, Dixon-Román’s book reconsiders how we conceptualize the processes of inheritance and approach social inquiry to sharpen understanding and address the reproducing forces of inequality.

“The recognition of the scholarly interventions I am making in Inheriting Possibility, I would argue, marks a watershed moment for the field of educational research and critical inquiry,” Dixon-Román said. “This work builds on the work of many that have been revisiting and rethinking conceptions of ontology, i.e., being and existence, and the category of the human. These are conceptions that understand nature, matter, and materiality to be dynamic, vibrant, entangled, and possessing all of the characteristics that we have attributed to culture.”

Also chair of SP2’s Data Analytics for Social Policy Certificate program, Dixon-Román’s research rethinks and reconceptualizes the technologies of quantification from a critical theoretical lens.

In his studies, Dixon-Román examines how power and inequality are reproduced, especially in human learning and development, and the ways in which sociotechnical systems of quantification are working on, with, and in the body to generatively form and shape the movement and flow of power, difference, and inequality.

AERA will honor the recipients for their outstanding scholarship and service at the sixth annual Awards Luncheon, April 15, at the AERA Annual Meeting in New York City.

“This year’s award winners exemplify commitment to the study and practice of education,” said AERA Executive Director Felice J. Levine. “We are proud to honor their outstanding scholarship and service to the field.”

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