About SERA

What is SERA?

Despite the increase in high-quality, experimental research being funded and conducted in special education, large-scale, representative, replication experiments remain scarce, which impairs the field’s ability to identify robust evidence-based practices across the spectrum of outcomes and populations of learners with disabilities. The Special Education Research Accelerator (SERA) is a platform for conducting crowdsourced replication research in special education.

What is an Accelerator?

An accelerator is a web-based platform for conducting large-scale, high-quality crowdsourced research using a standing network of laboratories and skilled researchers that have agreed to collect data for studies. Having a standing cadre of labs and researchers, as well as an established infrastructure and procedures for conducting studies across multiple research partners, allows us to quickly conduct high-quality, large-scale replication studies with diverse samples to address questions of consequence in the field. Accelerators can help democratize and accelerate the pace of research and accumulation of knowledge in our field.

Why Crowdsource?

Although special education researchers are conducting more rigorous experimental studies than ever before, methodological limitations to the special education research base persist that hamper the field’s ability to identify evidence-based practices and improve outcomes for students with disabilities. Critical limitations include:

  • A dearth of adequately powered randomized control trials (RCTs);
  • Lack of transparency and openness, which leads to researcher flexibility in conducting, analyzing, and reporting research;
  • Scarcity of independent, systematic replications; and
  • Limited diversity amount researchers, study samples, settings and contexts.

What do we do at UVA?

SERA serves as a dynamic platform that brings together multiple research teams to collaboratively conduct high-quality, large-scale, and open studies with diverse samples in special education. Our team is dedicated to designing the systems and infrastructure needed to facilitate this groundbreaking work while offering full support to research partners in executing crowdsourced special education research projects. By harnessing the power of our extensive network of researchers, we streamline large-scale data collection, ensuring that studies are both comprehensive and nationally representative. At SERA, our mission is to close the gaps in special education research by making it more accessible, inclusive, and efficient for all involved.