In April 2025 ahead of its annual conference, the American Educational Research Association (AERA) announced the release of the second edition of the “Handbook of Education Policy Research,” edited by Lora Cohen-Vogel, Ph.D., Frank A. Daniels Jr. Distinguished Professor at the UNC School of Education.
Peter Youngs, Ph.D., a professor at the University of Virginia and Janelle Scott, Ph.D., a professor at the University of California, Berkeley also edited the publication.
The handbook, which AERA calls “the largest book project in AERA’s history,” spans nearly 2,000 pages and includes 80 chapters within nine sections. The book explores the breadth and depth of scholarship in the field of education policy and politics, and includes citations to the work of several thousand additional authors. The table of contents can be viewed here.
“This handbook is intended to serve as the go-to resource for those entering the field and to honor those who have built the empirical, conceptual, and methodological insights and expertise from which we all benefit,” said Cohen-Vogel. “It is our hope that the handbook will inspire readers and provide launching points for new ideas and better studies that will ultimately lead to improvements in the experiences and outcomes of students everywhere.”
Cohen-Vogel, a leading scholar of education policy, joined the School’s faculty in 2011. She has been a leader in bringing continuous quality improvement concepts and practices to educational research and practice, including work on how to develop and bring to scale processes for school system improvement. She has been the associate director of the $13.5 million National Center for Scaling Up Effective Schools, a research-practitioner partnership with two of the nation’s largest school districts and five top research universities, and a principal investigator with the $22 million Early Learning Network.
She has served as a vice president of the American Educational Research Association and president of the Politics of Education Association.
The volume is available to purchase on aera.net. Attendees at the annual meeting may also purchase the book in Denver. In May, the handbook will be available in ebook and print-ebook bundle formats. In addition, all chapters will be available for sale as separate echapters, which will have their own digital object identifiers.