Graduate School of Education
At the University of Pennsylvania Graduate School of Education, we are here for change. We’re here because we believe in the power of education to build communities, bridge barriers, improve lives, and heal society. Here, we convene an ambitious and diverse community of leaders and pioneers, connecting them to one another and to a world that will benefit from their work. We equip them with immersive, real-world-based learning and research opportunities that bring them results. And we mobilize them to fulfill the promise of education in the classrooms, boardrooms, governments, and learning settings where true innovation and real transformation become possible. We offer vibrant array of high-quality master’s and doctoral degree programs.
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Publication The Illusion Of Inclusion: Curricular Possibilities Amidst A Homonational Project(2017-01-01) Kokozos, Michael J.In recent years, the LGBTQ community in the United States experienced many policy changes. Certain political advancements, which promise newfound protections and rights for LGBTQ individuals, might be considered an exceptional accomplishment toward inclusion. There is a lack of research, however, as to how this model of inclusion underpinned by heteronormativity and its appendage, homonormativity, which typically privileges white, well-to-do gay men, is incorporated into curricular resources and the ways in which these depictions and manifestations tie to national interests. As more resources become available to address LGBTQ issues, especially in schools, it is imperative to examine the practices by which these ostensibly progressive approaches may unintentionally reinforce the optimization of some LGBTQ students’ well-being to the detriment of other LGBTQ students – often along intersecting axes of race, gender, sexuality, and class. In particular, an area that warrants scrutiny concerns relations of power that inform conceptualizations of national LGBTQ “inclusion.” This project investigates what types of subjectivities LGBTQ curricular resources (re)produce and how these resources can also resist LGBTQ normativities. By applying a theoretical framework critical of inclusion to mainstream examples of LGBTQ curricular resources, I expose current and emerging approaches to LGBTQ inclusion as limited or exclusionary practices, reinscriptions of existing oppressive power structures, and part of a much larger project, homonationalism, which transform homonormative subjects into model members of the country. I conclude by offering educators suggestions to further “undo” homonationalism, as they, alongside their students, contemplate curricular and pedagogical possibilities for challenging the notion that there is an exemplary mode of being in the classroom and the world.Publication Recruiting and Retaining Teachers: Keys to Improving the Philadelphia Public Schools(2001-05-01) Watson, SusanIn 1996 the Consortium for Policy Research in Education (CPRE) at the University of Pennsylvania and its partner, Research for Action (RFA) were charged by the Children Achieving Challenge with the evaluation of Children Achieving. Between the 1995-1996 and 2000-2001 school years, CPRE and RFA researchers interviewed hundreds of teachers, principals, parents, students, District officials, and civic leaders; sat in on meetings where the plan was designed, debated, and revised; observed its implementation in classrooms and schools; conducted two system-wide surveys of teachers; and carried out independent analyses of the District’s test results and other indicators of system performance. An outline of the research methods used by CPRE and RFA is included in this report.Publication A Look Into the Bridges to the Future Initiative in India(2010-01-01) Literacy.orgA look into the Bridges to the Future Initiative.
Publication Providing Comprehensive Educational Opportunity to Low-Income Students: What are the Social and Economic Returns?(2011-01-01) Belfield, Clive R; Hollands, Fiona M; Levin, Henry MThis report estimates the economic costs and benefits attributable to a single cohort of 37,000 12th grade students in New York City public schools who come from families with incomes below 185% FPL. It calculates the net fiscal contributions by education level per individual. These contributions are tax revenues, minus government expenditures on healthcare, the criminal justice system, welfare programs, and school/college. The report also calculates the social impact of different educational attainment levels including the benefits of income gains, economic spillovers, reductions in crime, and improvements in health as education level increases.Publication Ventriloquating Shakespeare: Ethical Positioning in Classroom Literature Discussions(2001-10-01) Wortham, StantonPublication The Economic Value of National Service(2013-09-01) Belfield, Clive R.In this report we calculate social and taxpayer benefits of national service using current data and including a wider array of gains across a range of different programs. We use national datasets and existing studies of the association between service, education, and long-term impacts to calculate the economic value of national service programs.Publication Addressing Literacy Issues: Dan Wagner(2013-03-01) The Brookings InstitutionThe following is a video archive of All Children Reading: An International Literacy Day Event.
Publication What’s AHEAD Poll # 10: Closing Gaps in Higher Education Attainment(2016-06-01) Perna, Laura WPublication Infrastructure Redesign and Instructional Reform in Mathematics: Formal Structure and Teacher Leadership(2013-12-01) Hopkins, Megan; Spillane, James P; Jakopovic, Paula; Heaton, Ruth MDesigning infrastructures to support instruction remains a challenge in educational reform. This article reports on a study of one school system's efforts to redesign its infrastructure for mathematics instruction by promoting teacher leadership. Using social network and interview data from 12 elementary schools, we explore how the district's infrastructure redesign efforts were internally coherent with and built upon existing infrastructure components. We then explore relations between infrastructure and school practice as captured in the instructional advice- and information-seeking interactions among school staff, finding that teacher leaders emerged as central actors and brokers of advice and information about mathematics within and between schools. Further, changes in school advice and information networks were associated with shifts in teachers' beliefs about and practices in mathematics toward inquiry-oriented approaches consistent with district curriculum. We argue that the district's redesign efforts to support teacher leadership coupled district curriculum and school and classroom practice in mathematics.Publication Clearing Away the Self(2002-10-01) Michel, A. Alexandra; Wortham, StantonOne of constructionism's chief pragmatic goals is to facilitate relationships that have transformative potential. According to Kenneth Gergen, one important theoretical tool towards that end is relational theory, the construing of human behavior in terms of dialogic processes. We trace the meaning of 'dialogic' and 'transformative' through different constructionist traditions and argue that these terms are used in a relatively narrow sense, as compared to an alternative approach we are suggesting. Moreover, we propose that the usual narrow construal of these concepts has the unintended consequence of undermining the central constructionist goal of facilitating transformative relationships. We present an empirical example that illustrates (1) how people's conception of their self as a collection of social scripts draws their attention to and reinforces the accretion of scripts; (2) how this accretion can get in the way of transformation; and (3) how a broader conception of a 'dialogic' self can open up more direct, transformative relational possibilities.