What Type of Presentations Occur at CARE?
CARE is a national, juried research conference that is dedicated to presentations focused on education. Domains appropriate to CARE include P-12 teacher education, online learning, educational technology, higher education, educational psychology, adult education, special education, school counseling, school psychology, policy, school climate, literacy, TESL, and others. Generally, presentations fall into one of three strands: (a) Research presentations, (b) Scholarship presentations, (c) Application of scholarship to educational contexts. In this context, “research” refers to generating new information of some type, such as an empirical study involving data collection and the presenter shares the findings with the CARE audience. "Scholarship" is the integration of previous research findings, such as might occur in a literature review or the potential influence or application of a qualitative research method. The value exists as the author shares new insights, turning points, or perspectives on a topic of interest to qualitative researchers.
CARE also welcomes presentations that involve the application of research to classroom and other educational contexts. While CARE peer-reviewers value the role of authors’ own experiences, the conference is not the right venue to merely present “personal tips,” as the mainstay of a presentation; rather the conclusions should be contextualized in some type of scholarship and grounded in the overarching research literature.
All research methods are valued at CARE, including empirical (qualitative, quantitative, mixed, and case study) and non-empirical (e.g., historical analysis and archival). The scholarship of teaching and action research are aptly recognized and encouraged, again, assuming the presentation is grounded in data and not only personal experience.
The purpose of the juried CARE review process is to ensure the presentation’s applicability to the conference and that sufficient rigor is evident as is expected in a national research conference—not to rank the proposals or allow only a limited quota of submissions for presentation. We view a conference presentation as the first step toward potential journal publication—at which stage a second level of more stringent screening is applied. Such potential topics deserve a plenary hearing before peers as part of the overall evaluation process.