Pamela A. Moss

Initially, she explored methodological pluralism in the context of educational assessment: how different methodologies complement and challenge conceptions of validity and enable understandings of how educators actually interpret and use assessments. Her focus on methodological pluralism grew into a more general interest in research on the role of evidence in educational policy and practice. This line of work culminated in a book-length chapter, “Engaging Methodological Pluralism,” written with psychometrician Edward Haertel, published in the 5th edition of AERA’s benchmark Handbook of Research on Teaching.

Her current research focuses on knowledge infrastructures (KIs) in education research–dynamic relationships among policies, practices, norms, resources, social structures, and technologies, as well as methodologies, through which knowledge is produced—with particular attention to issues of epistemic justice. Goals for this line of work are both critical and generative: to build an argument for/illustrate the value of infrastructural studies in education research; to highlight affordances and limitations in our current KIs; to draw on KI-relevant resources outside education to illustrate possibilities for infrastructural design (and its consequences); and to engage by example in intentional, participatory infrastructural design and formative evaluation to explore alternatives.

Moss is an elected member of the National Academy of Education and a fellow of the American Educational Research Association. She was a member of the joint committee revising the 1999 AERA, APA, NCME Standards for Educational and Psychological Testing and chair of AERA’s Task Force on Standards for Reporting on Empirical Social Science Research in AERA Publications.