April 8–12, 2026
Los Angeles, CA
We’re excited to be attending the 2026 American Educational Research Association Annual Meeting. AERA is the world’s largest gathering of education researchers and a showcase for groundbreaking, innovative studies in an array of areas. If you’ll be in Los Angeles for AERA, we’d love to connect — let’s schedule some time to meet!
And don’t miss the two session that CAE’s Doris Zahner, Ph.D.’s will be presenting.
April 11 | 11:45 a.m. — 1:15 p.m. PT
Paper Session: Measuring What Matters: Challenges and Opportunities in Assessing Critical Thinking
Despite its central role in fostering intellectual autonomy and lifelong learning, assessing authentic critical thinking (CT) skills in higher education remains a persistent challenge. The limitations of traditional assessment methods underscore the need for more valid and reliable measures that capture the complexity of students’ reasoning, problem-solving, and reflective judgment. As institutions strive to prepare graduates for an increasingly complex and interdisciplinary world, investing in robust, equity-minded approaches to teaching and assessing critical thinking is not only essential, it is imperative for advancing meaningful educational outcomes and institutional accountability.
April 11 | 3:45 to 5:15 p.m. PT
Roundtable: Geospatial Analysis of Higher Education Students’ Critical-Thinking Skills
This study investigates regional disparities in critical-thinking skills among higher education students in the United States from over 80,000 exiting students who completed a performance-based assessment of critical-thinking. Employing kriging (Brimicombe, 2000; Isaaks and Srivastava, 1989), a geospatial statistical method, regional clusters of student performance were examined. Results reveal that students from less and non-selective institutions in certain regions demonstrate stronger critical-thinking skills than expected. These findings suggest that geospatial modeling can uncover hidden talent pools and promote equity in post-college opportunities. Geospatial analyses coupled with performance-based assessments can be used to inform educational policy and workforce development by identifying high-achieving students who may otherwise be overlooked.
