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Rebecca Woodland, professor of education, and College of Education doctoral students Injila Rasul and Fernando Mena Serrano, have received the 2024 Lorne H. Woollatt Distinguished Paper Award from the  Northeastern Educational Research Association (NERA) for their research paper, “Assessing the Impact of Professional Learning Communities on Teacher Enactment of Culturally-Responsive Science Curriculum.”

The award, named after esteemed New York state educator and NERA member Lorne H. Woollatt, was presented at the annual NERA conference in Connecticut last fall. Each year, the award highlights research that achieves the highest average rating based on criteria such as relevance, theoretical foundation, clarity, design, analytical procedures, and presentation of results and conclusions. 

The paper, which has been submitted to the editors at NERA to be published in their online proceedings and will soon be available online, was recognized by the award committee for its outstanding contribution to educational research, particularly in exploring how professional learning communities influence teachers’ implementation of culturally responsive science curricula.

As recipients of this award, the authors are invited to present their work and further share their findings with a broader academic audience at the 2025 meeting of the American Educational Research Association (AERA), April 23-27 in Denver.

Rasul is a doctoral student in the Mathematics, Science, and Learning Technologies program, and Mena Serrano, a doctoral student in the Research, Evaluation, Measurement, & Psychometrics program in the College of Education. Woodland is director of program evaluation in the Center for Educational Assessment and associate director of the Center for Education Policy.