Faculty and Programs

�� research fellowship centers community voices for research on school-to-prison pipeline

Olivia Peterkin — Wed, 28 May 2025 17:54:26 +0000

�� research fellowship centers community voices for research on school-to-prison pipeline

Olivia Peterkin Wed, 05/28/2025 - 10:54

Associate Professor Subini Annamma studies the impact of youth carceral facilities on young people's education and economic trajectories. (Photo: Joleen Richards)

Faculty and Programs | Research and Practice

Led by Associate Professor Subini Annamma, the FIRE Fellowship involves both surveying formerly incarcerated youth about their experiences and equipping them with research skills.

May 30, 2025

By Olivia Peterkin

When Subini Annamma was a special education teacher at high schools in California and Colorado, she noticed that certain students would disappear from class for days at a time, only to find out later that they’d been sent to juvenile detention centers.

This led her to go on to teach at some of these youth carceral facilities, where, upon meeting students inside, she saw a strong link between disability, race and the “criminalization of young people.”

Since then, her research has centered around these intersections, and how they impact the education and economic trajectories of youth from disadvantaged communities. Enter the FIRE (Formerly Incarcerated Research Experts) Fellowship, a program she created last year that centers the voices of formerly incarcerated young adults, and equips them with research skills.

“Like many others, I didn’t know much about the types of people who were in these facilities,” said Annamma, who is an associate professor at �� Graduate School of Education (GSE). “But what I found when I went into these places, was very smart and thoughtful young people who had often had really terrible social conditions put on them by adults, and that schools had a role to play in how these young people were ending up in these facilities.”

Centering community voices

FIRE Fellowship’s genesis came on the heels of a large national study for which Annamma and researchers have done nearly 100 interviews and 550 surveys of young people in various youth carceral — detention and confinement — facilities across the country to collect disability and race data.

“The federal government does not collect disability data for incarcerated youth, so we actually don’t know how many kids with disabilities are incarcerated, let alone how many kids of color with disabilities are imprisoned,” Annamma said.

As part of the program, fellows contribute to Annamma’s research through sharing their experiences, meeting weekly to learn analytical skills, and creating a research project of their own.

“FIRE Fellows is a way for us to live out our principles and ensure that we’re investing in the youth who we are researching,” said Jennifer Wilmot, a research project manager at the GSE working with Annamma on the fellowship. “It’s a privilege to talk to young people inside these facilities and hear their experiences.”

A’Kaysha Jackson, a FIRE Fellow from Baton Rouge, Louisiana, said she applied to the fellowship because she was interested in Annamma’s research, and she wanted to use her personal experiences to help further it.

“It really interested me to know that they were also looking for people who experienced being in foster care because there’s a connection between the two,” said Jackson, who is studying psychology at Southeastern University. “The biggest thing I came away with was learning that my voice matters, and that what I had to say was important, which was something I had to learn during this process.”

Equipping formerly incarcerated adults with research skills

Throughout the six-month fellowship, fellows worked on research projects using skills they developed along the way.

“One of the purposes of the FIRE fellows was to prepare these young folks to think about themselves as researchers,” said Veronica Velez, professor of education at Western Washington University, who helped teach fellows about spatial analysis. “I think for me, being a teacher of teachers was incredibly helpful in getting me to think through how I can help reconnect the perspective that they are intellectuals and that they bring so much to the work and to believe that about themselves.”

The fellowship culminated in a research convening in November where fellows presented their projects.

“Once I completed and presented my project, I felt really proud of myself for being able to apply what I learned and put something together,” said Katrina Stewart, a a fellow studying at De Anza College in Cupertino, California, who did her research project on alternatives to school policing. “That experience really is one of the main things that pushed me to transfer to a 4-year institution this fall. Being in a community of people that actually believed in me was really transformational.”

The FIRE Fellowship will continue with its second cohort either later this year, or early 2026, with the help of new funding from a Spencer Racial Equity Research Grant, which supports “education research projects that will contribute to understanding and ameliorating racial inequality in education.”

Ultimately, Annamma says she hopes that her research, including findings from the fellowship, will shed light on the ways that youth carceral facilities are harmful to student learning and future opportunities.

“FIRE fellows is one way we can pursue corrective action. It’s sharing the education that �� provides for people who would never have access to it, and that to me is a really important piece of FIRE Fellows,” Annamma said. “It’s to open up the doors of ��, as much as we open up the doors of youth prisons, and say, you deserve access to excellent education and these skills that are normally only taught to doctoral students.”

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Faculty and Research

Faculty mentioned in this article: Subini Annamma

Learning design: AI and machine learning for the adult learner

Olivia Peterkin — Tue, 08 Apr 2025 18:15:43 +0000

Learning design: AI and machine learning for the adult learner Olivia Peterkin Tue, 04/08/2025 - 11:15

Brain and Learning Sciences | Faculty and Programs | Research and Practice

In this episode of School’s In, GSE Associate Professor Candace Thille discusses how to build on prior knowledge and target skills for adult learners, and the intersection of machine learning and human agency.

April 17, 2025

By Olivia Peterkin

With emerging technologies like generative AI making their way into classrooms and careers at a rapid pace, it’s important to know both how to teach adults to adopt new skills, and what makes for useful tools in learning.

For Candace Thille, an associate professor at �� Graduate School of Education (GSE), technologies that create the biggest impact are interactive and provide feedback that is targeted and timely.

“Practice with feedback, and the opportunity to refine your performance based on that feedback, makes perfect,” said Thille, who is also the faculty director for workplace learning at the �� Accelerator for Learning.

Thille joins hosts GSE Dean Dan Schwartz and Senior Lecturer Denise Pope on School’s In as they discuss learning system design, including the importance of deliberate, iterative practice, how adult learners differ from child learners, and the interaction between machine learning and human agency.

“It’s important in these [AI-assisted learning] systems . . . that the human actor, whether that’s the teacher or the learner, always be in the position of making the decision,” she said. “You always want them to have agency, to be the one who is taking the action.”

They also discuss the role of motivation in learning design.

“Motivation is huge in adult learning,” Thille said. “When I’ve worked in workplace settings, I don’t do compliance training, where we have to prove to people that our employees were exposed to this information.

“I would always partner with business units that had a real business problem, something they really cared about, for which they believed changing the knowledge and capability of the people in that unit would make traction on that problem,” she said.

“And then the learning designer’s goal is not make something where people complete it and like it, but make something that you can demonstrate actually supported the people to develop the skills and knowledge they needed.”

Never miss an episode! Subscribe to School’s In on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Transcript

Candace Thille (00:00):

Where is the learner now? Where are they trying to get to? And what kind of strategy is going to be the most helpful?

Denise Pope (00:09):

Welcome to School's In, your go-to podcast for cutting-edge insights in learning. From early education to lifelong development, we dive into trends, innovations, and challenges facing learners of all ages.

(00:25):

I'm Denise Pope, senior lecturer at ��'s Graduate School of Education and co-founder of Challenge Success.

Dan Schwartz (00:33):

And I'm Dan Schwartz. I'm the Dean of the Graduate School of Education and the faculty director of the �� Accelerator for Learning.

Denise Pope (00:42):

Together, we bring you expert perspectives and conversations to help you stay curious, inspired, and informed.

(00:52):

Hi, Dan.

Dan Schwartz (00:53):

Denise, it's great to see you. Great to hear you.

Denise Pope (00:56):

We have a fun show today. I'm going to open us up with a question for you. This might be hard to answer. I don't know. I can't decide. A lot of people look to technology as a way to really change – a super game-changing way to change – teaching and learning. And so as you think about technology, and I don't mean a chalkboard or pencil or whatever – I know some people consider those technology – but as you think about technology, what do you think is an example of the best technology that's made the biggest difference?

Dan Schwartz (01:31):

Oh, that's easy.

Denise Pope (01:32):

It's easy? That's an easy question?

Dan Schwartz (01:33):

That's easy. It's easy. If we ignore hardware, the number one technology for learning is YouTube.

Denise Pope (01:39):

YouTube?

Dan Schwartz (01:40):

By far.

Denise Pope (01:41):

YouTube?

Dan Schwartz (01:42):

Yeah. How many . . . by far. You use it to fix the toilet. That, if you're a teacher, you show a YouTube video of the planets orbiting because it's so much more effective than looking at a picture in a textbook.

Denise Pope (01:54):

Interesting. First of all, I did not think you were going to say YouTube. And second of all, I don't use YouTube in my classroom, is that bad? I use YouTube all the time. I do. I use it when I need to fix something. I use it, well, mostly when I want to fix something, actually, yeah?

Dan Schwartz (02:12):

Yeah, that's a good use for it. If it's some sort of procedural thing, YouTube's pretty good. But you're probably . . . If you're trying to teach science, YouTube's got a lot of good videos, things like that.

Denise Pope (02:22):

I can see that. Interesting.

Dan Schwartz (02:22):

But I don't know. I don't know.

Denise Pope (02:27):

Well, this is why we're so lucky. We have an expert today who can talk about probably a lot more than YouTube but can certainly weigh in to that question. I'll let you do a little introduction, Dan.

Dan Schwartz (02:38):

Well, thank you. Thank you. This is a YouTube video of me introducing Candace. Hi, it's my pleasure to introduce Candace Thille, who is a professor at the Graduate School of Education, and she particularly focuses on adult learning, say, in the workplace, but also community college, and she's a big-time commitment to technology.

(03:02):

So Candace, is there a technology that's done something in education? Like, is there a big winner there?

Candace Thille (03:10):

You know, I actually wouldn't have picked YouTube as my number one

Denisd Pope:

OK?

Candace Thille:

But I figured I'd get a chance to weigh in on that. And I agree with you both that YouTube is great for – I mean, I use it when I want to learn how to pan fry salmon. I pull up a YouTube video. But what happens is the video is telling me what to do, and I'm doing it while the video is showing me, and I can stop it and rewind it and go, "Oh wait. How long am I supposed to put it on for? How much salt should I put on?"

(03:38):

And so I would say that the reason I learned how to cook salmon . . . the first time, I do it that way, step by step. The second time, I might use YouTube, have it playing, but I'm kind of doing it, and then it's like, "Oh wait, yeah, there's that part." And then the third time, I might quickly just review it and then just go cook the salmon. But, so you could say that the YouTube taught me how to cook the salmon.

(04:04):

I would say that the YouTube was a resource I used while I was learning how to cook the salmon. And what was really teaching me how to cook the salmon was I was cooking the salmon, and I was getting feedback from my experience that oh, I turned the heat up too high, I put in too much salt, it tasted funny, and I kept modifying what I was doing. So I was building my knowledge through my experience of what I was doing, and the YouTube was helping me perform that experience.

Dan Schwartz (04:34):

Oh, so your conclusion about the most important technologies will be ones that can give you feedback?

Candace Thille (04:40):

Well, feedback is important.

Denise Pope (04:43):

She also said experience is the best teacher.

Dan Schwartz (04:47):

I'm saying the key to experience, besides feeling the heat of the pan in your hand, is saying –

Denise Pope (04:52):

Don't underplay that.

Dan Schwartz (04:53):

No, no, I know that's very important.

Candace Thille (04:54):

And the taste of the salmon.

Denise Pope (04:56):

Don't underplay experience.

Dan Schwartz (04:58):

Well, the taste of the salmon is feedback.

Candace Thille (05:00):

That is. It is feedback. So feedback can come in many forms. It can be someone directly saying to me, "You have the stove up too high," or it could be, ooo, my salmon got cooked more than I wanted it to, maybe it's because I had the stove up too high. They're both feedback.

Dan Schwartz (05:18):

Right. And so, my proposal was that the technology that you are going to like the most is one that can provide the learner with feedback as they try and accomplish a task.

Candace Thille (05:28):

That's part of it, but not just any kind of feedback. Feedback that is . . . well, there's that old saying. Finish this sentence: Practice makes . . .

Denise Pope (05:38):

Perfect.

Candace Thille (05:40):

Nah, practice makes permanent. Practice with feedback. And I would add and the opportunity to refine my performance based on that feedback, makes perfect.

Denise Pope (05:52):

Wait, let's unpack that. Practice, and what does that practice look like, Candace? Because I know there's different kinds of practice. Right?

Candace Thille (05:59):

I would say deliberate practice.

Denise Pope (06:02):

And for the listeners, say what that is because I know that's a particular kind of practice, deliberate practice.

Candace Thille (06:08):

So, if I'm trying to learn how to play tennis, for example, I could just play a game. That’s what a lot of us do with our friends – go out and play a game – and I'll learn how to play tennis. However, if I get a coach who I'm intentionally trying to improve my tennis game, they'll look at me and say, "Oh, your problem is your serve, and it's that you're not throwing up the ball high enough, so I want you to practice throwing the ball up and getting it to just the right height."

(06:34):

Now, that's not as much fun as playing the game, but it will – if I get that component of my game – improve it. Then I can incorporate that into my game, and I'll play better tennis.

Denise Pope (06:46):

So deliberate practice is when you're practicing, but you have somebody telling you specifically what you should focus on. Yes?

Candace Thille (06:52):

It is practicing in a way where you are deliberately trying to improve or learn or achieve something.

Denise Pope (06:59):

So it's experience with deliberate practice, and then you had something else.

Candace Thille (07:04):

Yeah. So, part of the deliberate practice is you try something. You get feedback on it. You have the opportunity, then, to use that feedback to refine your practice.

Dan Schwartz (07:16):

So back to my assertion. For you, the technologies that are going to make the biggest impact are the ones that can provide feedback? That they're interactive?

Candace Thille (07:25):

That they're interactive, and they provide feedback that is targeted and timely.

Dan Schwartz (07:31):

Targeted and timely. I like that. So YouTube does not do that?

Candace Thille (07:34):

YouTube does not do that.

Dan Schwartz (07:34):

Not yet.

Candace Thille (07:35):

Not yet.

Denise Pope (07:38):

So . . . Dan's wrong. I like that. I like it when Dan's wrong.

Dan Schwartz (07:41):

Nice! Nice summary statement.

Candace Thille (07:45):

OK, we've learned everything we needed to learn here.

Denise Pope (07:47):

Exactly.

Dan Schwartz (07:47):

End the show.

Denise Pope (07:49):

But Candace, you really do work with adult learners, and you have this vast experience doing that in lots and lots of different ways.

(07:57):

So when you think about that versus maybe a younger learner or a child learner, what would you say are some of the key differences?

Candace Thille (08:06):

Oh. One is physiologically they're different in terms of brain development. Secondly, and I think actually probably the bigger difference, is experience and prior knowledge. Adults just have more of it. So much experience, so much new knowledge, is built on prior knowledge.

Denise Pope (08:25):

So let's talk about experience, though, because I also know – just like I said practice makes perfect – there's also: It's harder to teach an old dog new tricks. So how do you factor that in?

Candace Thille (08:40):

Yeah. So, that adage oversimplifies the situation. If the new trick that you're teaching me is lined up well with my prior knowledge, then it's actually easier for me to learn that new trick. If it interferes with something that – the meaning that I've already made in the world, then it's going to be harder to learn it because I don't have a . . . As I said, all prior knowledge either supports or inhibits the development of new knowledge.

Dan Schwartz (09:06):

So I have a paper that the title is “Prior knowledge: you can't live with it, you can't live without it.”

Denise Pope:

Oooo.

Dan Schwartz:

You like that?

Denise Pope (09:14):

I do. Wait, explain that. You can't live with it because . . .

Dan Schwartz (09:18):

Because it gets in the way. You have all these prior beliefs that can get in the way. You can be stubborn. But if you don't have any prior knowledge, it's so hard to make sense of things in the world.

Denise Pope (09:29):

Can't live with it, can't live without it. It makes sense. It makes sense, folks. I like it. I'm learning so much.

Dan Schwartz (09:35):

Candace, I've enjoyed this digression. It's been very good. Bring it back to technology. So I was setting you up to explain the kinds of technologies that you like to create, which are: bring copious feedback, opportunities to practice, so they're kind of create a world –

Denise Pope (09:53):

For adults. Just to clarify, Candace, you specialize in doing that for adults?

Candace Thille (09:56):

For adults.

Denise Pope (09:57):

Yes.

Candace Thille (09:59):

So, the kinds of strategies that you need to help adults build sort of new skills in their field. First off, you have to kind of know, have a clear articulation of what are the skills and knowledge that the adult's trying to build. So you need a clear target.

(10:14):

Then you need to kind of get a sense of where is the adult relative to that target. And once you have a clear idea of the learner's sort of current state relative to that desired state, then you can select a strategy that considers the kind of knowledge or skill that's being learned and things about the context and other things about the adult. And figuring that out is really complex.

(10:41):

So, if every time you had to make a decision about what should I do next, you need an insight into, where is the adult, where is the learner now? Where are they trying to get to? And what kind of strategy is going to be the most helpful? And you have to consider all of those features of the learner, features about the context, features about the thing that's being learned. That's too complex for most of our cognition.

(11:05):

And that's where the technology can really help. It can help on multiple levels of that very complex problem.

Denise Pope (11:13):

OK. It's so interesting because I teach curriculum construction, and I teach backward design, which is exactly that. Like if you're the teacher, you have to look at where you're going, look at where the learners are compared to where you want, and then what are you going to do to get them there. And so you're saying it's so complex, and I think teachers are doing this all over the world. This is what teachers are doing. So you've created technology to make that easier?

Candace Thille (11:36):

Yes. In the sense of, if you think about it, there are several human actors in that learning system, right? There are the learners, and they're trying to make good decisions to help move them from where they are to where they're getting to. There's the teacher who's trying to support those learners to go from where they are to where they're trying to get to. Then in the adult learning world, there's often a third party, which is the designer that people are often teaching curriculum or using assets that they didn't create. And the designer's trying to figure out what kind of asset's going to help my target learner move from there to there. So everybody's trying to make good decisions to help move that learner forward.

(12:19):

But in order to make that good decision, having that insight about: Where is the learner? Where are they getting to? Given what we know about the learner, what kind of activity is going to best help them? That's a very complex decision that has to get made very quickly. Now, teachers . . . You'd say, the teachers, really good teachers, use their intuition, and I would say their intuition is kind of based on, it might be on their formal training if they take classes from you.

Denise Pope (12:47):

I think teachers learn from experience.

Candace Thille (12:48):

They totally do. They totally do. And their experience is their observation, right? Of either what worked for them when they were trying to learn it, or, when they've tried to teach people it, what seems to work. They look at their students and go, "That worked. That got it," and they file that away. And they build up an intuition based on their observations and based on their experience, right?

Denise Pope (13:09):

Right.

Candace Thille (13:11):

So, if you think about thousands and thousands of teachers building up those observations, and they don't really . . . there's no way that I get to benefit from all of your observations, so I'm making my decisions based on my limited set of observations. If we had a way where teachers could make those decisions, and we collected the output from the student learning of that decision on a moment-by-moment basis, then we could start to build a database of interventions and outcomes and include in that data set features about the learner, features about the thing being learned, and features about the context. And then we could start to use the AI to help discover patterns.

Dan Schwartz (13:59):

So you're creating teaching machine that can engage in deliberate practice?

Candace Thille (14:06):

Yes. The machine itself would learn, yes. But the fun part about building these sorts of things is . . . so the machine is learning and can refine its insight and decision-making, but how do you communicate that insight to the different human actors in the system so that they make their own decisions? It's important in these systems – even when the machine has insight to make a good decision – that the human actor, whether that's the teacher or the learner, always be in the position of making the decision. But helping support their decision with what the machine knows. You always want them to have agency, to be the one who is taking the action.

Dan Schwartz (14:53):

So Candace, I'm trying to think of concrete instances to wrap my head around this.

Candace Thille (14:58):

Okay. So, let's say I'm in the workplace, and I'm trying to develop a skill or some new knowledge. So using a system that I may have developed at some point, maybe I'm trying to learn the skill of how to give good feedback or good coaching to a direct report. So, there could be a system that would tell me that larger skill – giving effective feedback – and that might have certain sub-skills that are required for me to be giving effective feedback.

(15:28):

With me so far?

Denise Pope (15:29):

Totally with you.

Candace Thille (15:30):

You have a system that'd say, "I'm going to learn today about how to give effective feedback." And so then I'd start engaging with an activity, like possibly giving a virtual entity feedback and engaging that conversation. Then I'd get feedback from the learning system on it, and then I could try again, et cetera.

Dan Schwartz (15:49):

So there's some scenario where I am looking at a fake employee representation, maybe it's just text, and something's happened, and then I am giving feedback. Something like that?

Candace Thille (16:01):

Well, actually, three things happen. Let's say I'm in some kind of environment where an employee comes in. I give them some feedback. Then based on the feedback, they respond in some way. Well, actually, the system knows, given that feedback, then this is how an employee would respond to that feedback. So, I get the next step in the scenario.

(16:23):

The action that I took is coded in some way and gets sent to a database, essentially, that is tracking my actions that are associated with different skills. And, at the same time, that action is put into a model that then estimates how well or not I am developing whatever the target skill is. And so then I have a dashboard or an indicator that I can always look at that tells me, on this set of five skills I'm trying to build, where's the system estimating I am relative to where I'm trying to get to.

(17:02):

And then I can choose – this is where the agency part comes in – these are the skills I'm trying to develop. I see that I'm doing great on listening well. I'm not doing so well on giving a positive statement before I give a negative statement or whatever. And so I think I want to work on that more. So, then I can choose that I want to work on that. And then the system will say, "Well, here's some more activities that will, given what we know about you, will help you develop that skill."

Dan Schwartz (17:30):

Is that where the choice is? The agency is me choosing what to work on?

Candace Thille (17:35):

Me choosing what to work on, when I feel like working on it. Also, I can say that the system can be doing these estimates saying, "You're there. You're great," or it can say, "We don't think you're there yet." I can say, "You know what? I think I'm there, so I don't want to work on this anymore because I get what you're saying. I believe I understand it well enough."

(17:56):

So, agency on so many levels. I'm just getting insight from the system about where this – given what I'm trying to achieve, the system's trying to tell me where I am relative to that, and I can decide what I want to work on, when I feel like working on, what I don't feel like working on.

[Music]

Dan Schwartz (18:16):

So Denise, I believe I've come up with a new construct. Well, this is how you survive an academy – in the academy. You come up with a new term. It's called feedback deprivation.

(18:31):

I think feedback is a basic human need. And if you get deprived, it's really miserable. And my example is that earlier today I gave a presentation to about 30 people I don't know. I'm sweating. I'm giving it my whole heart. It's the best thing I've ever done, but it's on Zoom, and nobody gets to say anything. And then the Zoom window closes, and it's over. There's no even, like, elevator music to allow me to leave quietly and softly. And then, you know, an hour later, I will get an email from the host who says, "Great job. Thank you so much," and that'll be it.

Denise Pope (19:08):

OK. That great-job email is feedback. I mean-

Dan Schwartz (19:11):

No, no, no. They have ChatGPT write it. Because I've done this 100 times, and it's always the same email.

Denise Pope (19:17):

"Great job. Thank you so much."

Dan Schwartz (19:18):

It doesn't matter who I'm talking to. Yeah, it’s "Thank you so much. That was great." Sometimes they use the word “fabulous.” Sometimes they say, "Nice."

Denise Pope (19:27):

So, OK, so here’s my – because I'm right there with you. I think it's so, so hard. It's literally like you're just shouting into the abyss. And so here's my trick. I just need one person. I don't need all 150 whatever. I need one person's face on screen that I can watch, and I can see, and that's how I get my energy. They're my target person.

Dan Schwartz (19:48):

Yep. Hence you decided to have me as a co-host.

Denise Pope (19:52):

Yes, this is why we do the podcast –

Dan Schwartz (19:53):

So you didn't have to do it alone?

Denise Pope (19:55):

100%. This is why we –

Dan Schwartz (19:55):

Now, I know.

Denise Pope (19:56):

... do the podcast together, so I could see your face, and I get my energy off of your expressions or your eye rolls or your falling asleep or whatever it is. But no, 100%, and I would choose you every time.

Dan Schwartz (20:06):

Thank you, Denise.

[Music]

Denise Pope (20:13):

OK, so I just did traffic school online. [Groans] OK? I'm admitting this to you all.

Dan Schwartz (20:19):

Rolled through a stop sign?

Denise Pope (20:19):

Don't even get me started.

Dan Schwartz (20:21):

Rolled through a stop sign?

Denise Pope (20:24):

No, I was speeding. I was speeding. OK. Uh, traffic school online, right? So, I'm doing it, and I'm answering a question, but they're asking a scenario. "What would you do?" This is not your normal traffic school online. This was a little bit more advanced kind of thing, or it seemed it. They're asking a scenario, and I'm answering what I would do in that scenario. And then if it likes my answer, I can go on. And if it doesn't like my answer, they'll be like, "Let's rewind and try again."

(20:50):

So, how is this different from that? Because I think what you're saying is more advanced than this little traffic school thing that I just took, but how is it different?

Candace Thille (20:58):

There are multiple ways it's different. One of the ways I would actually start with is your motivation. What was your motivation in doing traffic school? Were you actually-

Denise Pope (21:05):

I had to.

Candace Thille (21:06):

...You had to. Your motivation was to finish traffic school so that you get the points taken off of your driving record.

Denise Pope (21:15):

Exactly.

Candace Thille (21:15):

Your motivation wasn't, "Oh! I need to learn how to drive more effectively, so I'm really trying to build some knowledge and skills here."

Dan Schwartz (21:22):

Say, Denise. Denise ... Sorry.

Candace Thille (21:25):

Go ahead.

Dan Schwartz (21:26):

This is why you have kids. Let them do the online school for you.

Denise Pope (21:29):

First of all, don't even laugh. That is illegal. Don't think that we didn't look into this before. You cannot have to . . . You have to swear that you are the one taking the class.

Dan Schwartz (21:36):

Fine.

Denise Pope (21:39):

I know how you're thinking, Dan.

Candace Thille (21:40):

I took online traffic school once, too. And one of the things I also noticed that they did – because what I figured out with the online traffic school – well, it wasn't very sophisticated at all. They told you all the stuff they wanted you to know, and then the next screen they asked you questions basically saying, "Did you read what I told you to read?" They even put nonsense things in there like, "Jenna wears a black jacket," and one of the questions would be, "What color is Jenna's jacket?" They were really just trying to see, did I read it? They weren't really concerned with my learning anything.

Denise Pope (22:12):

Correct.

Candace Thille (22:12):

So, what I did (uh-oh, probably shouldn't say this). Um, what I did was I just got two screens, and I copied all the text off of it because I knew they were going to ask me questions about that page. And then I just searched “Jenna” and found oh, her jacket is black. I never read any of it, but I could answer every single question.

Denise Pope (22:30):

OK, so . . . cheating or shortcut or whatever.

Candace Thille (22:34):

No, it's all about what I started off asking you. What's your goal? If your goal is to actually build knowledge and capability, or is your goal to finish it? And that's why in all the workplace training work that I've done, I never would do compliance training.

Denise Pope (22:51):

Wait, compliance meaning . . . ?

Candace Thille (22:53):

Compliance. Companies are like, "You have to take a class on sexual harassment." That's the classic, right? And it's not that most people – the reason that most people are taking that is because you get told you have to do it, and you keep getting hammered to do it. For most people, it's not because they genuinely believe they need to understand better what sexual harassment is and to stop that behavior and so on like that.

(23:18):

So, motivation is huge in adult learning.

Denise Pope (23:21):

So, you are consciously only taking on projects where you think people will actually want to learn the skills that this technology is going to help them learn?

Candace Thille (23:29):

Yes. And also, I never use as an outcome measure completion.

Denise Pope (23:34):

Oh . . . say more about that. Why?

Candace Thille (23:36):

Because implicitly then the message to me as a learner is my job is to work through all of this learning material and get to the end. So that's my job as a learner. My job as the designer of that learning experience is design something where people get all the way to the end and at the end give it a good customer satisfaction score. "Did you like it, or didn't you like it?"

Denise Pope (24:00):

Or did you learn? Isn't it also, did you learn?

Candace Thille (24:02):

No.

Denise Pope (24:02):

No?

Candace Thille (24:02):

People don't ask that. People ask, "Did you complete it?" Because people assume completion is a proxy for learning.

Denise Pope (24:10):

Oh . . . that's key! That's a key misconception.

Candace Thille (24:12):

It is a key misconception. And so exposure . . . I mean, exposure, completion doesn't . . . like, like your driving school thing. You completed it. What did you really learn except for how to complete that most efficiently?

(24:29):

And when I've worked in workplace settings, I don't do compliance training where the only goal is, we have to prove to people that our employees were exposed to this information. So, when I was building learning experiences in the private sector, I would always partner with business units that had a real business problem, something they really cared about, for which they believed changing the knowledge and capability of the people in that unit would make traction on that problem.

(25:01):

Then you have to build that whole causal chain back to it, and then learners have to believe, "Yeah, I want to build that skill." And then the learning designer's goal is not make something where people complete it and like it, but make something that you can demonstrate actually supported the people to develop the skills and knowledge they needed.

Denise Pope (25:20):

It's cool stuff.

Dan Schwartz (25:21):

How brittle is this kind of technology? Like, just let me take a wild example, that you know a lot about. I'm trying to teach people how to service heat pumps. Heat pumps, right, they're environmentally much more friendly, and so people are switching from furnaces and air conditioners to heat pumps. There's not enough experts out there to teach everybody, right? So we got to go to the computer to train those 800,000 heat pump . . . but it's really physical. Right? Like you got to reach inside and turn your elbow just to the left.

(26:00):

Can the technologies do this? Or is it just like –

Denise Pope (26:04):

But, I mean, also can't you just learn that on YouTube? Sorry. Not to demean the agent, but, like, right? Are we right back to YouTube here? Go ahead, Candace.

Candace Thille (26:15):

Actually, skilled trades like that, like heat pump installation, there is a real shortage of what we call the climate trades workforce. And there, as Dan pointed out, one of the real challenges is there aren't enough mentors. Apprenticeship is the historic model for learning those kinds of skills. And there just aren't enough mentors for all the people that we need to achieve the climate goals.

(26:40):

So, we are working. We've got a project called HVAC Hero, and we're working with local heat pump installers to develop a blended, computer-mediated human learning experience. And we're targeting accelerating the time it takes to move someone from, "I want to be a heat pump installer," 'til they are at a certain level of customer-ready to go out and do the installation.

(27:08):

From a learning science perspective, it's a really interesting and fun problem too because it's not just cognitive. It's cognitive and physical, and how do you integrate, but it's not either or. It's cognitive and physical at the same time. So how do you integrate paying attention to both dimensions and learning that?

Denise Pope (27:29):

Especially through a screen, which is why I think that's why it's hybrid with a human, right?

Candace Thille (27:34):

Well, you can hybrid with a human. You can hybrid with simulations. You can hybrid with actual fake models of things. There are all kinds of ways that you can incorporate the physical and the cognitive together.

Denise Pope (27:49):

So cool. So cool. Oh, my gosh, Candace, we have learned so much today. I'm excited. Dan, I'm going to put you on the spot, as I tend to do at the end of these episodes. Sum it up.

(28:01):

What do you think you learned about our main question, technology as a game changer for adult learning? What would you say?

Dan Schwartz (28:07):

I think the interactivity is really special. And so, you need an environment where people can take actions, and you sort of want to set them up working on the right actions given what they know, but then you have that challenge of choosing the right feedback.

(28:22):

What's the right feedback at this moment? I think it's an interesting problem. It's something that teachers face. When you're grading essays, there's a million different things you could say. And figuring out ways to get smarter about that, even automate it, save a lot of time for a lot of people and be good for learning.

Denise Pope (28:42):

And Candace, how'd he do? Feedback. Feedback for Dan.

Candace Thille (28:48):

He did great, and I would draw a little bit of the analogy to the homework problem. Just like you can't give the students three hours of homework and expect them to really develop and refine their knowledge, you can't do the same thing with teachers. You can't have them – ask them – to pay attention to 5,000 things all at the same time and refine and develop their skill at teaching. So having the support of the technology that helps both collect the data, model the data, give them the insights so they can make good decisions and refine their teaching.

Denise Pope (29:26):

Very cool. Very cool. All right. So exciting. Well, thank you. Thank you for being here, Candace.

Candace Thille (29:31):

Sure. It was fun.

Denise Pope (29:32):

And thank all of you for joining this episode of School's In. Be sure to subscribe to the show on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you tune in. I'm Denise Pope.

Dan Schwartz (29:42):

I'm Dan.

Podcast

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GSE area

Faculty and Research

Faculty mentioned in this article: Candace Thille , Dan Schwartz , Denise Pope

Public service for a new generation, with Tom Ehrlich

Olivia Peterkin — Tue, 18 Feb 2025 22:56:22 +0000

Public service for a new generation, with Tom Ehrlich Olivia Peterkin Tue, 02/18/2025 - 14:56

Faculty and Programs | Impact

In this episode of School’s In, GSE Adjunct Professor Tom Ehrlich discusses what it means to engage in public service in our democracy, and how to create pathways for students to participate.

February 20, 2025

By Olivia Peterkin

In a modern world where civic engagement can be anything from signing an online petition to social media activism, the picture of an engaged citizen in democracy has evolved over time.

When it comes to what public service looks like for the next generation, Tom Ehrlich, an adjunct professor at �� Graduate School of Education, believes that it needn’t look much different from how it has in the past.

“For most it is really caring about the people they're serving,” said Ehrlich, who has served the federal government under six United States presidents. “Being a public servant means you're serving and trying to really say what it is that the public you are serving needs.”

Ehrlich was formerly president of Indiana University, provost of the University of Pennsylvania, and dean of �� Law School, as well as serving in leadership positions in six presidential administrations. And he still spends his days promoting leadership and service to the next generation.

“These days I'm basically trying to help individuals a little bit, and make their lives a little bit better, which is different than trying to help shape a whole institution,” Ehrlich said. “But all of those are important. And, unfortunately, today I am afraid too often students, particularly, shy away from doing public service.”

Ehrlich joins hosts GSE Dean Dan Schwartz and Senior Lecturer Denise Pope on School’s In as they discuss how to encourage students to engage in public service, the qualities of a good public servant, and the importance of having mentors.

“The key to life is to have role models. Not that you're going to replicate them, but they set a standard of what you could do,” he said. “And you may not reach that standard, but you're going to try a little harder and you're going to learn a little more.”

Never miss an episode! Subscribe to School’s In on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Transcript

Tom Ehrlich (00:01):

This is part of being a citizen in a democracy, which is not a spectator sport. You have to be involved and engaged.

Denise Pope (00:12):

Welcome to School’s In, your go-to podcast for cutting-edge insights in learning. From early education to lifelong development, we dive into trends, innovations, and challenges facing learners of all ages. I’m Denise Pope, senior lecturer at ��’s Graduate School of Education and co-founder of Challenge Success.

Dan Schwartz (00:35):

And I’m Dan Schwartz. I’m the Dean of the Graduate School of Education and the faculty director of the �� Accelerator for Learning.

Denise Pope (00:45):

Together, we bring you expert perspectives and conversations to help you stay curious, inspired, and informed. Hi, Dan.

Dan Schwartz (00:55):

Hi, Denise. I have a question for you.

Denise Pope (00:58):

You do?

Dan Schwartz (00:59):

I do.

Denise Pope (01:00):

Okay.

Dan Schwartz (01:01):

So I get confused about what counts as public service. So I try to solve this problem by looking at different types of activities and professions, and I think I concluded that my barber does public service.

Denise Pope (01:14):

Really?

Dan Schwartz (01:15):

Well, yeah. I mean, he cuts my hair, which makes me look better to everybody else. Is that like a public service?

Denise Pope (01:21):

So it serves the public, you look better, and so you’re making the public happier because we don’t have to look at your hairy face? or hair?

Dan Schwartz (01:29):

Something like that. But I vote, that seems like civic participation but not public service. So what do you think of when you think of public service?

Denise Pope (01:40):

I think of anybody really serving the public, teachers and people who work in the government and nonprofits and NGOs, and I think there’s a lot of people who do public service.

Dan Schwartz (01:52):

Interesting. So you sort of define it by the sector. Well, we’re lucky because we have the man who knows public service. Our guest today is Tom Ehrlich. So Tom was dean of the law school at ��. He was the provost at University of Pennsylvania. He was the president of Indiana University, and now he is an adjunct professor within the School of Education, so we are very lucky. Along with all those, which you may or may not consider public service, he also served six U.S. presidents, and so I think that’s pretty important. And then another service that he does is he writes books. He writes books faster than most people read, and he has a new one that just came out that I’m going to ask about, Learn, Lead, and Serve: A Civic Life. But Tom, welcome and tell us what counts as public service.

Denise Pope (02:44):

Oh my God. And can we just say we’re bowing down because what a life.

Dan Schwartz (02:50):

It’s amazing.

Denise Pope (02:50):

What a career, what a life. It’s amazing. It’s amazing.

Tom Ehrlich (02:54):

I’ll bottle all that for dark days and look at it when it comes. To me, it obviously depends on why you’re asking the question. What it is that you want to call service. Public service or non-service depends on the circumstances. That said, from my perspective, at the core is service in local, state, national, international government. Around that are a series of nonprofits, as Denise was suggesting, that directly relate to public policy and shaping public policy and helping the public as kind of a next round. Teachers are vital to the country. They’re vital to our democracy. And I do call that public service, particularly if it’s in public institutions where they have a special obligation, as I did at Indiana University, to help promote the well-being of the citizenry of the state. Other times you may want a larger or narrow difference because as Dan said, even his barber has some public service for trying to make him look a little better than he otherwise might.

Denise Pope (04:08):

Wait. Okay. Wait, Tom. Are you really counting that as a yes or are you being facetious?

Tom Ehrlich (04:10):

No, I’m not counting it, but since Dan was and he’s my dean, I thought I better at least give a bow in that direction.

Denise Pope (04:19):

Oh, this is a kiss up. This is a kiss up.

Tom Ehrlich (04:22):

I do that all the time. Of course.

Denise Pope (04:26):

This is how he had such a long, illustrious career, is he’s very good at kissing up to the people who supervise him.

Dan Schwartz (04:33):

Well, so that’s actually a relevant segue. So besides kissing up, what sorts of things make a good public servant? You’ve been around a lot. There’s probably some public servants who aren’t great and some who are. Are there qualities that you can identify?

Tom Ehrlich (04:51):

Sure. Again, it depends on the job, but for most it is really caring about the people they’re serving. Public servant means you’re serving and trying to really say what is it that the public I am serving needs. Listening hard and trying to be sure you’re responding to what you hear in ways that can be positively helpful, and then having the grit to stay with it. I think in leadership positions, at any one time, in my experience at least, you can only really focus on two or three big things that you want to get done and drive to get those done, but in other ways, you can do a lot of little things. These days I’m basically trying to help individuals a little bit, make their lives a little bit better, different than trying to help shape a whole institution. But all of those are important. And unfortunately today I am afraid too often, students particularly, kind of shy away from doing what I’ve called public service.

(06:03):

They see politics as a mess and they don’t want to get engaged in it, and even nonprofits. They’re more interested here at �� in consulting and finance. Not that those aren’t important, but I wish we had more of our students and more students across the country who can say, “I want to help make this democracy stronger and better for those least able to help themselves.”

Dan Schwartz (06:29):

So it’s interesting. We were just having a conversation at the top levels of the university about political service, and the observation was there’s actually quite a few students who want to do that, but there’s no sort of organized structure for them to find a way in. So, for example, companies come and advertise internships, the federal government doesn’t come and advertise pathways into federal service. Does that resonate, Tom, as a possibility?

Tom Ehrlich (07:00):

Somewhat, yes. And the government is often more bureaucratic in terms of getting there. I do think the most important way for students in higher education to get engaged is actually not just to learn about government and to learn how it works, but also to engage in it. And that’s one reason I have been strongly encouraging a summer or quarter of public service, defined, as the Haas Center here at �� does, for all undergraduates in some form. Some can’t because they’re athletes or some other, but I would like to see that happen and the university help publicize them because you’re quite right. If you’re going to work for McKinsey, chances are they’ll be here and take you to lunch and dinner. The government doesn’t do that, but we can use more. But those internships in the government, all the way from local, state, national, international, are there, and I think they don’t reach out the way the corporations do, but I agree, the university can help them. But they need – students need – to have experience in order to make them care.

Dan Schwartz (08:16):

I may challenge that question in a second. But before I do, does that idea get pushed back, that, “I’ve paid for my kid to go to school and now you’re saying he has to go do something for somebody else? That’s not what I paid for.” Or people say, “That’s a great idea, we just don’t have the time to do it.”?

Tom Ehrlich (08:34):

Some of both.

Dan Schwartz (08:34):

What is the reaction to that? Some of both?

Tom Ehrlich (08:36):

It’s mixed. Some say, “Why, I just want my child to have a job and get better,” But a good many, fortunately, say, particularly those who have been in public service in the armed forces or otherwise, “This is part of living a good life. This is part of being a citizen in a democracy, which is not a spectator sport. You have to be involved and engaged.” And the only way really to understand that is to have some experience in doing that. When I was growing up some 90 years ago, students took civics in the fifth grade and they went to school boards, they listened, they wrote letters to their congresspeople. Unfortunately, after the second World War, I think the advent of political science as a science said you really shouldn’t be involved at all, you should be disengaged and just analyze it as abstraction. Well, that may be all right if you’re going to become a professional political scientist, but it’s not good if you want to be a professional citizen.

Dan Schwartz (09:42):

So all you political scientists out there, I know it’s a large proportion of our listenership, Tom has deep respect for political science. He just doesn’t think it’s the pathway to be involved in politics.

Denise Pope (09:55):

Well, there’s lots of ways that you can be of service. So, I think, let’s tease this out a little bit, Tom, because I think there’s the idea that you can go and do an internship and, you know, go to DC or go and do a local internship in your own community. But then there’s also what Dan said about voting, about making yourself heard, about rallying for causes that you believe in, right? So, I do think people will push back and say, “It takes time. I don’t have the time or the money.” It may be, as you say, that they don’t know about it. So I do think bringing them in and helping them to know, “Hey, these are out there.” But I also know it is a reality that a lot of people can’t do a free internship and a lot of nonprofits or government agencies don’t pay for that. So, is there a happy medium somewhere?

Tom Ehrlich (10:43):

We’re fortunate at �� where every person, every undergraduate who wants to do a summer of service gets a stipend. It’s not a fortune, but it’s enough to live on. And my hope is, in the current capital campaign that’s going on, we’ll be able to do that for at least all students who want to. But I’d like to go further and say all students, unless they have a real excuse, they can’t do it. We have programs now at ��, �� and government particularly, where students actually engage in what’s going on in government at the time. This is for government in Washington at the national level, but we have internships in the local and state level too where students really participate, actively. And they also, in their classes that are involved, too, or programs, they’re learning. And so the academic learning strengthens the service learning, and the service learning strengthens the academic learning.

Denise Pope (11:50):

I mean, those programs are amazing. I know. I did not know that you could get a stipend, and that’s a great thing to tell our listeners and they can pass that word on because that’s, uh, that’s amazing.

Dan Schwartz (12:04):

So John F. Kennedy had a very famous line. He said, “Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country.” And so the image is that you participate in the institutions of the country and you serve. I think this may have changed. I think for a lot of students, public service is trying to change the institutions rather than working through them. And so they, they think they’re, and maybe they’re correct, that they’re participating in society by actively protesting what society is or advocating for different structures, and I think that’s viewed as or felt as participation. What do you think?

Denise Pope (12:43):

I don’t know. It’s kind of an interesting thing. I agree and I’m glad that we are seeing sort of a revitalization of youth activism, right? You see it with the climate change, but I am not sure I agree with the change because when he’s saying ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country, I think activism is part of that, I mean, right? I think there’s a whole bunch of ways that you can serve or do for your country, from voting, from being a good neighbor, from, you know, taking a job in the public sector and from making your voice heard when you think that your country or your community is doing something wrong. So, I see them all as ways of doing for your country. Yeah. What do you think?

Dan Schwartz (13:39):

I agree. I think people look at students protesting or advocating, talking about unfairness, as a lack of participation.

Denise Pope (13:47):

Well, I think they’re annoyed by it. Oftentimes they’re just annoyed by it, right? They’re like...

Dan Schwartz (13:51):

Could be.

Denise Pope (13:52):

Those kids and cancel culture.

Dan Schwartz (13:54):

Right. That stupid music they listen to.

Denise Pope (13:57):

We say black and they say white or whatever, right? That’s just normal, you know, old people griping. But no, I think we are in a time of real revitalization of youth activism, and that gives me hope, because what we’re seeing in D.C. does not necessarily give me hope, but what we’re seeing in communities who are rallying and kids who are saying, “You know what? We’re inheriting this earth so we’re going to really make sure that climate change is front and center,” Or, “We understand the importance of respecting everybody’s identities.” Right? And so I appreciate that. The children are the future, Dan.

Dan Schwartz (14:45):

So Tom, this was a little bit of my pushback on how you get people engaged in public service, and it actually comes from your book. I enjoyed Learn, Lead, Serve: A Civic Life. I have to say, Tom, you’re developing a style that I like. You’re very good at sort of describing the setting and the scene and the decision-making. It’s very good.

Tom Ehrlich (15:08):

Thank you.

Dan Schwartz (15:08):

But here’s the thing...

(15:09):

No, it is.

Denise Pope (15:10):

That was Dan kissing up to you, Tom.

Dan Schwartz (15:13):

No, that’s not kissing up. That’s Dan channeling the truth. But the thing that really struck out, not struck out in a bad way, but the thing that really

Denise Pope (15:22):

stood out?

Dan Schwartz (15:22):

-stood out, that’s what I’m looking for, was, I was impressed by the incredible importance of role models and your engagement in public service. And so I was wondering, is this kind of a key to really effective public service experiences that you learn from, is to kind of find the right people to help you, to show you what it looks like, to make it something you aspire to?

Tom Ehrlich (15:48):

Dan, I think that’s the key to life.

Dan Schwartz (15:50):

Oh, wow.

Tom Ehrlich (15:51):

To a life well lived.

Dan Schwartz (15:53):

Drop the mic.

Denise Pope (15:54):

Yeah, this is huge. Okay, Tom, you’re telling us the key to life. We’re listening.

Tom Ehrlich (15:59):

Right, is to have role models. Not that you’re going to replicate them, but they set a standard of what you could do and you may not reach it, but you’re going to try a little harder and you’re going to learn a little more. And I’ve been blessed in my own life, starting with my father and a great judge, uh, Learned Hand, whom I worked for and others in the government who were extraordinary role models and they made me a little better, sometimes a lot better, than I’d might otherwise been. And over and over again, I encourage students to find others whom they admire and would like to work, not only with, but gain some of their knowledge, strengths, and abilities, and then try to do that. Most of us, certainly at my age, like to be asked for advice, but many students are shy about reaching out and asking, “Could you help me with this? I’m wrestling with this issue.” And that makes the difference.

Denise Pope (17:10):

I think – first of all, that’s amazing advice, and you are a role model for so many people – and I also think that there is this sense of Tom has worked for all these presidents and he ran a university and he was a dean. I mean, who am I to go up and say, “Hey, excuse me. Could you help me with my little bitty problem?” I do think people look at people like you, and even you Dan (and now I’m kissing up), but it’s like you guys are busy and you have big roles and it’s hard and scary for someone who’s a student or someone who doesn’t know how to approach that to even think about it. Like, what would be the language, Tom, that you would advise a student to take who wants to get in touch with you and ask for your advice?

Tom Ehrlich (17:55):

No one runs the university, so if I may correct you on that. But to the extent, a leader is there, being a walking around leader, being one who meets with students, being one who says to students, “I’m really open and interested not only in what you’re doing but what questions you have about your own life and how you can live it in a way, how you want to relate to the world around you, and so please come to me.” You can’t, as a university president or a dean, you can’t do that for all students one at a time. But if you say that and say that’s what our faculties are there for – everyone who works at the School of Education or at �� is a teacher. Whether they’re in the classroom or not, they’re teaching, they’re teaching at least by example, and, uh, making it clear that you’re there to help them. And to me, and I know to Dan and you, it’s a great satisfaction.

Denise Pope (18:59):

No, I like how you flip that, that it’s the adults. The adults need to be more out there and open and show that they really mean it and are receptive, and then I think it will make the students feel more comfortable. But I do think as a message to students and listeners, it can’t hurt to ask, right?

Tom Ehrlich (19:16):

Right.

Denise Pope (19:16):

No matter how famous or big or whatever the person is, right? It can’t hurt to ask.

Tom Ehrlich (19:21):

So many times I have heard from students who maybe were students 10 or 15 or 20 years ago, “You probably don’t remember this, but I asked you this and you gave me this piece of advice and it has changed my life.” Well, a little hyperbole there, no doubt, but still, it obviously really made a difference and they remembered it. It’s another reason I ask students over and over again, please thank your teachers. Because too often these things happen, but the teachers never know about it. So it’s good to say thank you to those who made it happen.

Denise Pope (20:02):

I don’t want to bring us down in any way, but I do wish that there were more role model types that we were seeing in Washington, D.C. I do think the reason why people are really hesitant to get into politics is you see this broken system and you see the people who are winning –

Tom Ehrlich (20:21):

Yeah, but how’s it going to get fixed? The way it’s going to get fixed is for people like our students getting in and getting involved and being those role models. Unfortunately, given the media these days, the bad apples get the most publicity. I understand that, because, in my experience at least, there are hundreds and thousands and thousands of public servants who don’t get publicity, don’t get anything other than the satisfaction of knowing they are doing something to make our democracy work better. But that said, having our students, and broadly, that’s why I help start two national organizations that are really aimed at helping students get the knowledge, the skills, the attributes to be engaged in public service in some way.

Dan Schwartz (21:12):

Tell us about one of those organizations. I didn’t know this.

Tom Ehrlich (21:15):

Well, one is called Campus Compact, which was started in the mid-1980s, and I was chair of its board for a while, and it was an organization of presidents. Much of the role of a president is not the most exciting thing. It’s budgets and cutting back on this or building on this.

Denise Pope (21:36):

These are university presidents.

Tom Ehrlich (21:38):

These are university presidents. Sorry. Yes.

Denise Pope (21:38):

University presidents.

Tom Ehrlich (21:39):

So the chance to take the high road and say what we’re really trying to do, some of the time at least, is help our students do what I’ve been talking about, which is make the world a little better. And Campus Compact grew to some state compacts, 36 of them, including here in California, and a large national group, and it’s still going strong. The other is called the American Democracy Project, which has some 300 – the Campus Compact has well over a thousand campuses with their presidents – American Democracy Project has some 300-plus broad-access public institutions like the Cal State system, where students are really focused on the abilities to become engaged in public policy or politics as students and for the rest of their lives. It doesn’t work for all students and it doesn’t certainly happen as evenly as all, but those are two of the organizations. And there’re others. I just haven’t been involved with all of them.

(22:46):

I have some for K–12 schools, too, that I’ve been engaged with that, that help bridge the gap between just watching what seems like a mess going on in Washington and the reality of knowing you can participate and make it better.

Denise Pope (23:04):

That’s like the epitome of Tom. This is how I would describe Tom. You see a problem and you say, “You know what? We could fix this. Let’s get a bunch of people together and talk about it and figure out what they can do. And since you were a university president, Campus Compact, let’s get a bunch of university presidents together and talk about this.” And I know that the Haas Center came out of some of that Campus Compact work, and service centers all over the United States came out of some of that Campus Compact work. Really cool.

Dan Schwartz (23:34):

Nah, it’s phenomenal.

Denise Pope (23:35):

Okay. I have a quick last question for you, Tom, because I know we’re running out of time. And we have you here, so can’t not ask this. As you look back at, sort of, all the stuff you did, right? One piece of advice that you learned or one nugget, what’s one nugget that you want everyone to know? I’ve had this full life, here’s a nugget, everybody.

Dan Schwartz (23:57):

Denise, he just wrote a book with all the nuggets.

Denise Pope (24:00):

I know, but I’m distilling it. I don’t have my copy yet. Is there a distillation?

Tom Ehrlich (24:08):

Can I give a nugget that’s outside of the realm we’ve been talking about?

Denise Pope (24:11):

Of course.

Tom Ehrlich (24:13):

Good. Well, before Ellen, my wife, and I got married 67 years ago, my father-in-law pulled me aside and said, “Tom, if you each go two-thirds of the way, maybe you’ll make it.” And I found that advice, not just in marriage or in other relations, but in many things. If you could try to go two-thirds of the way –

Dan Schwartz (24:38):

So I think I’ve got this. You’re facing each other and you’re each going two-thirds, so you’re going to overlap. That’s the imagery.

Tom Ehrlich (24:46):

That’s right.

Dan Schwartz (24:48):

Yeah.

Denise Pope (24:49):

I love it. I love it. I love that image and I love that advice, and it applies to much more than marriages, but also what an amazing, amazing thing that you’ve done personally, socially, and so much good for the world. So Tom, thank you so much. I’m so excited to read the book. And I definitely want a signed copy. I’m just putting that out there.

Tom Ehrlich (25:07):

Yeah, I’ll do that too. Good! Well, thank you so much for letting me be with you. It was my great pleasure.

Denise Pope (25:16):

And Dan, as you think back to this conversation, what are some of the things that you’re going to really remember?

Dan Schwartz (25:23):

Ahhh. You know, I always take a learning angle, and, um, I think the social model, you know, where you see other people do it, it’s important for you to get in the game. But, you know, he kept emphasizing the importance of the experience, and I think you need that experience of, like, how satisfying it is to actually help someone else. And that’s what keeps you in the game and makes it so that you want to do that more. And so I thought that was really interesting that you –

Denise Pope (25:47):

You have to really feel it.

Dan Schwartz (25:48):

Yep. Yep.

Denise Pope (25:49):

Yeah, so true. Tom, thank you so much. Thank you to all of our listeners for joining on this episode of School’s In. Be sure to subscribe to the show on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you tune in. I’m Denise Pope.

Dan Schwartz (26:04):

And I am Dan Schwartz. And thank you for joining us.

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Faculty mentioned in this article: Thomas Ehrlich , Denise Pope , Dan Schwartz

Learning from before and building toward more: �� GSE pilot course teaches the history of California education

Olivia Peterkin — Tue, 11 Feb 2025 21:41:44 +0000

Learning from before and building toward more: �� GSE pilot course teaches the history of California education

Olivia Peterkin Tue, 02/11/2025 - 13:41

�� GSE assistant Professor Mike Hines (center) with STEP students Emilio Luna (left) and De’Jshon Maxwell-Garcia (right), who took his pilot course on the history of education in California. (Photo: Joleen Richards)

Civics and History | Faculty and Programs | Teaching

A new course for teacher candidates, led by �� professor Michael Hines, takes a journey through the state's legacy of learning.

February 12, 2025

By Olivia Peterkin

If you were to teach a course on the history of education in California, where would you start?

Would you kick things off in 1921 when the state board of education was established? Or back in 1874, when attendance became compulsory for children ages 8 to 14 in California?

More importantly, how would you convey the significance of knowing the state’s educational history in the first place?

For Michael Hines, an assistant professor at �� Graduate School of Education (GSE), the place to start is long before California reached statehood – going back to Indigenous traditions in education then moving through European colonization and their impact on how children were taught. It’s important for California teachers to understand the history of education in the state, he said, because it affects their work in ways they may not even realize.

“Teaching is a deeply historical act, and whenever teachers come into a classroom they carry historical narratives with them,” said Hines, who piloted a course on the history of education in California last summer through the �� Teacher Education Program (STEP), a master’s program at the GSE that also leads to a preliminary California teaching credential.

“Whether these narratives are stories about the purpose of American education or stories about the histories of the communities where they’re working, the act of becoming a teacher or going into the classroom is freighted with this historical context that often goes unacknowledged.”

Doing the homework

The pilot course was funded by a STEP mini-grant, designed to encourage GSE faculty and doctoral students to pursue innovative projects that advance the field of teacher education. The mini-grant program supports STEP’s mission to serve as a “learning laboratory,” where faculty can explore and test new initiatives, and doctoral students can deepen their knowledge and skills.

Upon being approved for the STEP mini-grant in the fall of 2023, Hines and two GSE doctoral students, Ayan Ali and Abigail Kahn, set to work on figuring out what would be covered in the course and how they would deliver it to STEP students in the allotted week of instruction.

“This just felt like a really unique opportunity to create an exciting syllabus, and to think deeply about the needs of people who were going to be entering California classrooms in the very near future,” said Ali, who studies the history of education under the GSE’s Social Sciences, Humanities, and Interdisciplinary Policy Studies (SHIPS) program.

“We spent a lot of time doing background readings on histories of education in California, trying to get a lay of the land,” she said. “I spent a couple of months familiarizing myself with the literature.”

Hines, Ali, and Kahn worked together to gather a variety of historical materials, including primary and secondary sources, and to lead class discussions.

Kahn, whose dissertation proposal focuses on schools in internment camps for Japanese Americans during World War II, led a discussion for the course about this history in California, as well as ��’s involvement in creating curricula for the camps. “I gave each of the students copies of letters from December 1942 from ninth graders at the Minidoka concentration camp, introducing themselves to their teachers.”

The purpose of the exercise was to think about what the STEP students may be teaching at schools.

“School has a big hand in history, and in teaching students about race,” Kahn said.

Sharing with the class

Abigail Kahn (left) and Ayan Ali (right) are GSE PhD students who helped construct the course. (Photo: Joleen Richards)

Since the course isn’t a requirement for their degree, the STEP students all signed up on a volunteer basis to take the class for the week between their summer and fall teaching placements.

“The students who signed up were incredible throughout the entire process,” Hines said. “They came in with so much enthusiasm for the material, as well as questions, such a command of some of the issues we wanted to discuss, and with so much grace and empathy for each other and for us as an instructional team.”

“They really did help us co-construct the classroom space,” he said, “and that was one of the things that made it such a unique and positive experience for me.”

Emilio Luna, a STEP student raised in San Diego, said he enjoyed the course’s look into how different social and ethnic groups influenced education in the state.

“I learned more about the Chicano movement, including how it was often led by young people, and it helped me understand more about myself and where I stand in the history of California education,” Luna said. “I also learned more about what my role is as an educator, especially someone with my identity and how I position myself in the classroom to serve kids who have an identity similar to mine.”

For De’Jshon Maxwell-Garcia, a highlight of the class was learning about some of the local efforts people took to ensure equity in education for Black students, such as the work of Mothers for Equal Education, in East Palo Alto, who created Nairobi Day Schools to support learning opportunities for Black children.

“It surprised me how deeply rooted my efforts today are to things people have done in the past to ensure educational equity and freedom,” said Maxwell, a STEP student originally from Fresno, Calif.

“Thinking about the hurt, struggle, and pain that people have directly experienced in education makes things more real, and allows you to start thinking about things from the past and disrupt however it shows up today,” he said.

The instructional team also conducted interviews with the STEP students to gauge what they learned and felt they could apply to their teaching.

Hines and the STEP leadership team are now considering next steps for the course. An updated version, based on student feedback, is likely to happen this summer, said GSE Professor Ira Lit, faculty director of STEP.

“This course rests on an important idea that practicing teachers need to know and understand important aspects of the history of education to best serve and lead in the present,” he said. “I’m excited to see what we learn from this project and how it will help us move our work forward.”

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Faculty mentioned in this article: Michael Hines , Ira Lit

In first novel, �� scholar explores challenges faced by college presidents

Brooke Donald Gorlick — Thu, 31 Oct 2024 04:37:22 +0000

In first novel, �� scholar explores challenges faced by college presidents

Brooke Donald … Wed, 10/30/2024 - 21:37

�� GSE's Tom Ehrlich explores the relationship between university athletics and academics in his new novel set at a fictional college campus. (Photo: carterdayne/iStock)

Campus Life | Faculty and Programs | Higher Education

Tom Ehrlich, of the Graduate School of Education, tells a tale of academics vs. athletics in his first novel, and prepares for his upcoming memoir.

October 30, 2024

By Brooke Donald

Tom Ehrlich, adjunct professor at �� Graduate School of Education, has served in six U.S. presidential administrations and been university president, provost, and dean at three public and private campuses across the country. As a legal and education scholar, he has written 14 non-fiction books and scores of articles.

Now at age 90, he’s taking on a decidedly different genre: fiction. “It’s a lot of fun,” Ehrlich said. “It’s liberating to be able to say, ‘What if?’”

The first of his two novels, so far, is The Search: An Insider’s Novel About a University President. While the book, which was published last summer, draws on his own experiences at Indiana University, where he was the 15th president, the story explores the timeless friction between athletics and academics and the ongoing debate around the value of higher education and who colleges serve.

His second novel, due to be published next fall, is a murder tale - not at a university, but at an independent living community like the one in Palo Alto, where he and his wife, Ellen, now live. “I’m a big believer in telling stories,” Ehrlich said, “and telling them in ways that reveal something about how we live and learn and engage with each other.”

In between those novels, Ehrlich’s memoir will be published in January 2025. Learn, Lead, Serve: A Civic Life provided Ehrlich with the opportunity to dive deeply into his own stories, from childhood to now, spotlighting his close-knit relationship with his father, and the work he and Ellen did in higher education, government, and nonprofit organizations.

The following interview was edited for length and clarity.

The Search follows the president of fictional Nebraska State University looking for a new football coach/athletic director after the beloved coach suddenly dies on the field at a big game. Why did you take this angle?

You write what you know. And the issue of academics over athletics was starting to roil again. I thought it would be interesting to weave this issue into a novel.

When I was at Indiana University, I was in very public disagreement with the combative basketball coach Bob Knight. I received 10,000 letters about how I was handling or mishandling the situation. One I kept in my office and looked at whenever my head was getting a little swelled. “Mr. President, I’m 84 years old. I’m in a wheelchair. I live for Indiana University basketball. You can take your goddamn bow ties and go back where you belong.”

I was hired at Indiana to strengthen academics while also understanding the role and power of the athletics program. In my novel, the protagonist, Charlie Rosen, was hired at Nebraska State - a fictional school - to do the same.

I tried to give a sense of what it felt like to be president when you were trying to grapple with so many constituencies in a public university. A public university is the “main street” of American higher education, and I wanted to be on that street.

�� GSE Adjust Professor Tom Ehrlich (Photo courtesy of Tom Ehrlich)

College presidents are facing many tough issues these days. Given what you know and experienced, would you encourage someone to go into that role?

Yes! Presidents are facing tough issues, but they’ve always faced tough issues. When I was provost at the University of Pennsylvania, for example, there were frequent sit-ins in my office.

The job is challenging but I enjoyed the chance to strengthen the university. What a wonderful opportunity it was! I like academic planning. To work on what I call “institutional architecture” – making a great university even better – was a privilege. I tried to help strengthen the ways in which students learned, and faculty taught and did research. It’s a challenge to be a university president, but one that comes with a lot of joys as well.

This was your first novel. How did that compare to writing academic papers or nonfiction?

Novels must be interesting and entertaining. I took a creative writing course at ��. I liked it so much that I took two more! There were challenges. I’m used to writing in paragraphs, and people don’t talk in paragraphs so creating dialogue was a challenge. The other big challenge was including many details. You want to know that someone is wearing a pale green shirt and white pants. All those things that make your character a human being in a novel, you don’t worry about in academic pieces. In fact, you might lose points in an academic paper if you put those in! There were many other lessons I learned in my creative writing courses. I had great teachers, and their courses helped.

Your memoir is called Learn, Lead, Serve: A Civic Life. Is that how you’d describe your life?

My editor chose the title, but yes, I really have enjoyed learning, leading institutions, and serving the public interest. And I enjoy teaching. Every year I was a dean, provost, and president, I taught at least one course. I had never taught when I walked into my first course teaching contracts at �� Law School. Initially I could not understand why students found some concepts so difficult, while I found them so simple. Finally, I asked a friend to video several classes, and by studying the videos I began to see where my students weren’t getting the concepts. I learned how to identify and unpack roadblocks and meet students where they were having problems. When I joined the �� Graduate School of Education faculty, that experience led me to teach the course, “Teaching and Learning in Higher Education.” I still believe that doctoral students who are planning to become faculty members should take at least one course that will help them be better teachers.

The memoir focuses on my time in the federal government, as well as my years at ��, the University of Pennsylvania, and Indiana University. In meeting the leadership challenges on those campuses, I tried hard to connect what I learned in one position to do a better job in the next position. I also had great satisfaction working in the federal government – in the State Department when JFK and then LBJ were presidents, as the first president of the Legal Services Corporation, which funds legal aid for poor people, and working directly for President Carter in charge of bilateral and multilateral foreign aid policies. These experiences have made my primary other roles in higher education ones that help prepare college students with the knowledge, skills and attributes to be actively engaged in civic work. It concerns me that so few young people today are interested in public service. Our country suffers as a result.

What is next for you?

I’ve entered a new chapter, so to speak. I’m still a GSE adjunct professor, helping whenever I am asked and advising students, and I hope to remain in that role as long as I am vertical. I am grateful to the school, its faculty and administrators for giving me the chance to be their colleague. Now I also volunteer at a number of community organizations. One, for example, helps immigrants improve their English.

Will there be another novel? I doubt it—but one never knows.

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�� professor elected president of the National Academy of Education

Brooke Donald Gorlick — Tue, 22 Oct 2024 03:27:42 +0000

�� professor elected president of the National Academy of Education

Brooke Donald … Mon, 10/21/2024 - 20:27

�� Professor Alfredo Artiles named president-elect of the National Academy of Education. (Photo: Ryan Zhang)

Announcements | Faculty and Programs | Research and Practice

Alfredo J. Artiles, who studies disability and racial disparities in education, will begin his term at the honorific society in October 2025.

October 21, 2024

By Olivia Peterkin

�� Graduate School of Education (GSE) Professor Alfredo J. Artiles has been selected to be the next president of the National Academy of Education.

Beginning in October 2025, Artiles will serve a four-year term. He is the fifth �� scholar to hold the title. He will replace current president Carol Lee, a professor emeritus of education at Northwestern University, who is in the final year of her term.

“This is a tremendous achievement. Alfredo is a strong advocate for education and knows deeply the value of education research,” said Dan Schwartz, the I. James Quillen Dean at the GSE.

In his new role, Artiles says he hopes to produce and advance educational research while building on the work of past presidents to shape the future of education.

“Learning about my election as president was a humbling and joyful moment given the impact and importance of the NAEd in the field and its importance in my own trajectory in this illustrious community,” Artiles said.

Artiles, who joined the GSE in 2020, studies how disability can be used as both an object of protection and a tool of stratification in education settings. His work focuses on topics such as the cultural-historical contexts of racial disparities in special education and discipline, and whether a disability diagnosis is associated with differential consequences for minoritized groups.

Artiles brings extensive experience as an interdisciplinary scholar to the role having served as vice president of the American Educational Research Association’s Division on the Social Contexts of Education, member of several consensus panels of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine, and resident fellow at the Center for Advanced Studies in the Behavioral Sciences.

“I am a firm believer in the power of rigorous educational research to transform people’s lives, address societal inequalities, and contribute to the public good,” said Artiles, who is also a faculty affiliate of the �� Accelerator for Learning. “I also have deep expertise in the study of differences and opportunities in educational systems.”

“These values, personal experiences, and expertise will serve me well as I work to enact the vision and mission of the NAEd,” he said.

Founded in 1965, the National Academy of Education advances education research and its use in policy formation and practice. The Academy consists of U.S. members and foreign associates elected based on outstanding education-related scholarship.

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Faculty mentioned in this article: Alfredo Artiles , Dan Schwartz

Two �� education professors appointed to endowed chairs

Olivia Peterkin — Wed, 09 Oct 2024 00:56:14 +0000

Two �� education professors appointed to endowed chairs

Olivia Peterkin Tue, 10/08/2024 - 17:56

(Photo: Andrew Brodhead)

Announcements | Faculty and Programs

Philip Fisher, who focuses on early learning, and Maisha T. Winn who researches equity in education, were appointed to endowed chairs.

October 9, 2024

By Olivia Peterkin

�� Graduate School of Education (GSE) professors Philip Fisher and Maisha T. Winn have been appointed to endowed chairs, the highest honor the university can bestow on faculty.

Fisher, who has been at the GSE for two years, was named to the newly established Diana Chen Professorship; and Winn, who recently joined the GSE, was named to the Excellence in Learning Graduate School of Education Professorship, which was previously held by Fisher.

GSE Dean Dan Schwartz announced both Fisher and Winn’s appointments at a GSE faculty meeting on Oct. 8.

“Professor Fisher is an exceptional intellectual leader who not only generates discoveries and practical applications in his own work, he is also a field builder who brings together talent and helps faculty collaborate,” Schwartz wrote in nominating Fisher for the professorship.

In Winn’s nomination Schwartz said, “Professor Winn is one of those hires where everyone within �� and beyond is stunned that we managed to bring her to ��. And everyone is extremely excited that we did.”

“She seeks to understand how communities that have been depicted as under-resourced create practices, processes, and institutions of their own — and what we can learn from those examples to build more just, more collaborative, and more equitable futures,” she said.

Philip Fisher was named to the newly established Diana Chen Professorship.

Philip Fisher

Fisher joined the GSE in 2022 as a professor of education and, by courtesy, pediatrics. He is also the faculty director of the �� Center on Early Childhood, an initiative of the �� Accelerator for Learning.

His research focuses on developing and evaluating scalable early childhood interventions in communities, and applying research on healthy development amid adversity to social policies and programs.

He has published more than 200 scientific papers in peer reviewed journals, and developed several evidence-based interventions for supporting healthy child development in the context of social and economic adversity. He was awarded the 2012 Society for Prevention Research Translational Science Award, and is a 2019 Fellow of the American Psychological Society.

Fisher received his Bachelor of Arts from Bowdoin College in Brunswick, Maine; his master of science in clinical psychology from the University of Oregon, Eugene; and his doctorate in clinical psychology from the University of Oregon.

He is the first person to hold the Diana Chen Professorship, which was established this month with a donation from entrepreneur and philanthropist Diana Chen. The endowment was created for a scholar whose research and teaching is in early childhood learning.

Maisha Winn was named to the Excellence in Learning Graduate School of Education Professorship.

Maisha T. Winn

Winn joined the GSE on July 1 as professor of education and faculty director of the Accelerator’s initiative for equity in learning, and her research focuses on restorative justice and contemporary and historical perspectives in Black education.

She was named an American Educational Research Association Fellow in 2016, received the William T. Grant Foundation Distinguished Fellowship in 2014, and received the American Educational Research Association Early Career Award in 2012.

Winn was also a 2022-23 Andrew W. Mellon Fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences (CASBS) at ��, is an American Educational Research Association Fellow and the Association’s President-Elect, and a member of the National Academy of Education.

She is the second person to hold the Excellence in Learning Graduate School of Education Professorship, which was established in October 2022.

The endowment was created for a scholar who demonstrates a depth of excellence in the field of education and is committed to pursuing equitable, accessible, and effective learning for all.

Winn received her bachelor’s degree in English from the University of California, Davis; her master’s degree in Language, Literacy & Culture from ��; and her PhD in language, literacy and culture from the University of California, Berkeley.

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Faculty mentioned in this article: Philip Fisher , Maisha Winn

Cultivating a generation of education innovators activating learning science

Olivia Peterkin — Fri, 20 Sep 2024 21:38:28 +0000

Cultivating a generation of education innovators activating learning science

Olivia Peterkin Fri, 09/20/2024 - 14:38

�� master's students in the Learning Design and Technology program present their projects at the annual LDT expo. (Photo: Joleen Richards)

Faculty and Programs | Technology

The new program launched by the �� Accelerator for Learning helps �� students find their place in the education innovation ecosystem.

September 19, 2024

By Isabel Sacks

Prior to attending �� Graduate School of Education (GSE), Aditya Vishwanath, PhD ‘23, was an engineer. While working on virtual reality (VR) learning tools at Google, he grew increasingly concerned that companies and districts were dropping edtech into classrooms like “a cool new hammer” without teachers ever being involved. The tools, which didn’t necessarily solve real problems of teaching and learning and were difficult to implement, would then sit in the corner of the classroom, collecting dust.

During his second year at ��, where he studied learning science and technology design, he co-founded Inspirit, a startup that combines VR and AR technology with research-based instructional practices in STEM education.

“I wanted to address this topic through the lens of the learning sciences, and be the bridge between cutting edge academic research and a solution,” he said. During his time at ��, where he was also a Knight-Hennessy Scholar, he found resources across campus to support his entrepreneurial journey. Vishwanath took courses on learning design at the GSE in order to craft a research-backed product; cultivated mentors in �� Accelerator for Learning Faculty Affiliates Roy Pea and Jeremy Bailenson; and received a seed grant to design effective Virtual Field Trips (VFTs) alongside Pea, a project that became his dissertation research and directly informed the design of Inspirit.

While a �� doctoral student, Aditya Vishwanath launched a venture using learning science to design virtual reality tools for classrooms. (Photo: Courtesy Aditya Vishwanath.)

However, Vishwanath found that he had to seek out these support systems on his own, and opportunities to connect and build community with fellow education founders were few and far between. While �� offers many entrepreneurship opportunities, few were connected to education and to what works in learning.

That is changing, thanks to a new program of the Accelerator, a university-wide initiative that works to accelerate solutions to pressing challenges facing learners. What had previously been a loose collection of opportunities for budding education innovators across campus has now become a burgeoning community with a plethora of resources to facilitate their journey.

Exploring entrepreneurship and learning science

Starting this Fall, the newly launched Education Entrepreneurship Hub will engage students from across �� with education, connection, and immersion opportunities to integrate insights from learning science into their entrepreneurial endeavors. The hub supports �� students and recent alumni who want to build new organizations, be intrapreneurs within an existing organization, or innovate in other ways, across the for-profit and nonprofit spectrum.

The Education Entrepreneurship Hub will include a mentorship program connecting students to industry experts, a database of learning and funding opportunities, events, and a collection of profiles of diverse alumni entrepreneurs. The Learning Design Challenge, the Accelerator’s existing flagship education entrepreneurship program for students under the direction of Keith Bowen, PhD ‘20, will become a part of the new hub.

Students pitch their projects at the Learning Design Challenge pitch day in Spring 2024. (Photo: Joe Sherman)

Angela Chen, MA ‘23, the senior project manager at the Accelerator who helps launch new programs, developed the hub with input from students, alumni, faculty, and staff across campus. She also drew upon her own experience as a student interested in education entrepreneurship after having built her own venture prior to graduate school.

“Many �� students are curious about education innovation and want to learn the basics and explore. Others already have an entrepreneurial idea to address a pain point they experienced as a teacher or a student, and are looking for opportunities to accelerate their idea and bring it to the next level,” she said. “Both groups can find value in the hub’s programming.”

What binds the emerging entrepreneurs, Chen added, is, “we’ve all been through the education system and feel an impetus to change it for the better.”

The hub aims to help students integrate insights from the learning sciences into their entrepreneurial endeavors. “�� is an entrepreneurially robust campus, but most opportunities for students are industry-agnostic,” said Chen, highlighting programs like the Threshold Venture Fellowship in the School of Engineering, the Botha-Chan Innovation Program at the Graduate School of Business, and student-run Cardinal Ventures. Chen drew inspiration from conversations with each of these groups, as well as the Center for Entrepreneurial Studies and the Center for Social Innovation, who remain close collaborators with the hub.

While a student, Chen was one of the first non-engineering students to be selected as a Threshold Venture Fellow and one of the first non-business students to be awarded the Botha-Chan Innovation Grant. She found it challenging to find information and mentors specific to education, where users are learners and pilots take place in classrooms. Now, �� students who want to pursue education innovation will have a place to go specifically built for them.

The hub is designed to be inclusive and accessible, contributing to the development of evidence-based innovations in education at large. Programming is open to students across ��’s seven schools, including undergraduate, masters, and doctoral students, and any student can join the hub by filling out an interest form. The hub also includes public resources that may be useful for recent alumni entrepreneurs. The program works with the career development and alumni relations teams at the GSE and with education and entrepreneurship initiatives across �� to bring the best programming to students.

Students listen to a panel about careers in education entrepreneurship at the 2023 Accelerate Edtech Impact Summit. (Photo: Ryan Zhang)

“�� is at its core a transformational institution,” said Chen. “Our goal is to cultivate a generation of education innovators who think about learning science and equity and access.”

Vishwanath’s company, Inspirit, now four years since its founding, is being used in hundreds of districts across the United States and globally. The product includes an end-to-end toolkit for integrating immersive learning into existing lessons and curriculum; an expansive library of lessons in history, math, science, and career education; and lesson options that work on VR headsets or in a Chromebook browser, expanding accessibility to classrooms where purchasing expensive headsets isn’t feasible.

“Entrepreneurship is painful, hard, and I don’t recommend it,” joked Vishwanath, who will be serving as a hub mentor, offering insights to students. “But if you truly care about a problem you want to solve, it is one of the most powerful ways to filter through the noise and have an impact.”

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Faculty mentioned in this article: Roy Pea , Jeremy Bailenson

Post-pandemic learning: Where are the kids?

Olivia Peterkin — Wed, 28 Aug 2024 18:45:30 +0000

Post-pandemic learning: Where are the kids? Olivia Peterkin Wed, 08/28/2024 - 11:45

Education Policy | Faculty and Programs | K-12

Tom Dee discusses how the COVID-19 pandemic affected student learning and school attendance and how schools can help them recover.

August 15, 2024

By Olivia Peterkin

Researchers are still studying the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic and remote schooling on student learning. Learning loss, the effects of the disruption on the youngest learners (PK–2), and the sustained increase in chronic absenteeism among K–12 students all pose serious challenges to schools going forward.

On this episode of School’s In, Tom Dee, the Barnett Family Professor of Education at �� Graduate School of Education (GSE) joins hosts Dean Dan Schwartz and Senior Lecturer Denise Pope as they discuss what research tells us about these challenges.

“Basically an additional six and a half million kids in K-12 public schools are now chronically absent” compared to before the pandemic, says Dee, who defines chronic absenteeism as a student missing 10% or more of school days for any reason.

Despite the high rates of students still out of school, Dee says all hope is not lost.

His research sheds light on key issues including low-cost, scalable strategies to improve school attendance, and the importance of using targeted, evidence-based strategies and teaching methods to improve student achievement in subjects like reading.

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Transcript

Tom Dee (00:00):

Basically an additional six and a half million kids in K-12 public schools are now chronically absent.

Dan Schwartz (00:08):

Today we're tackling one of the most significant challenges post-pandemic, learning loss and chronic absenteeism. Our guest is Tom Dee. He's a professor at the Graduate School of Education and he's an expert in education policy and economics. He's also been deeply involved in researching the impact of Covid-19 on students' academic performance and their attendance.

Denise Pope (00:29):

Welcome to School's In, [00:00:30] your go-to podcast for cutting-edge insights in learning. Each episode, we dive into the latest trends, innovations, and challenges facing learners. I'm Denise Pope, senior lecturer at �� GSE and co-founder of Challenge Success, and I'm with my co-host, Dan Schwartz, Dean of �� Graduate School of Education, and the faculty director of the �� Accelerator for Learning.

Dan Schwartz (01:00):

[00:01:00] Denise, so good to see you. I hope you're doing well. It's good to be here and I'm looking forward to our show today, as always.

Denise Pope (01:08):

Me too, Dan. I'm so excited. It's going to be a really good one. If you were long-time listeners, we are so glad to have you back. We are so appreciative. And if you're new, we're glad you found us.

Dan Schwartz (01:21):

Denise, it is so good to hear the dulcet tones of your voice yet again.

Denise Pope (01:25):

Oh, Dan.

Dan Schwartz (01:26):

I'm so glad we're back together.

Denise Pope (01:27):

It's very exciting.

(01:29):

Tom has [00:01:30] been spending a lot of time looking into what's happening in schools post-pandemic, and in today's episode we're going to hear about his research on learning loss and absenteeism, and we're going to discuss what schools and parents can do to help students get back on track. So important.

(01:45):

Tom, we are thrilled to have you here. So we're going to just go ahead and dig in with the big question, just how much learning was lost during the pandemic?

Tom Dee (01:54):

Thank you, and thanks for having me. So in terms of learning loss, pretty substantial. So [00:02:00] basically 20 years of test score gains have been wiped out with particularly large losses in math and smaller ones in reading. For those in the audience who used to listening or reading about education research, on the order of 10 to 15% of a standard deviation. So pretty substantial. But those gains over 20 years were more modest than we would like.

(02:23):

But I also think there are important dimensions of the pandemic learning loss that we have yet to understand. [00:02:30] In particular, what a lot of my work done in collaboration with journalists and collecting data on enrollment has shown is that the kids who experienced the most substantial disruptions missing pre-K, skipping kindergarten, switching schools, were our very youngest learners who are just beginning to age into testing windows where we'll really know about how their trajectories have changed.

(02:54):

So we're going to learn a lot more in the next few years about that as those kids grow up. And [00:03:00] I've argued in some of my writing too, it creates a kind of bias in our discourse because we look where the light shines, we look at the older kids in tested grades, but there may be very serious harm to the kids who aren't yet in the penumbra of that light. It's not shining on them yet.

Denise Pope (03:19):

That's a little scary.

Dan Schwartz (03:22):

No, I've been worried about this. In particular, is there a developmental window that closes that there was some kinds of learnings that you can't get [00:03:30] at another age? Language acquisition gets a lot harder as you get older. I'll be interested to see the results.

Tom Dee (03:37):

Also though, I want to stress a kind of historical-minded perspective on this because anyone who's studied education knows that crisis rhetoric comes up as regularly as the sun. And so I have that in the back of my mind as I'm sitting here saying, this feels very much like a crisis, that we've said this before, but we really mean it this time.

(04:00):

[00:04:00] But I think it is serious both because of that learning loss, because of the enrollment disruptions, but even more disturbingly what we're seeing about how kids are readjusting to a kind of return to normal and in-person instruction. And with some of the most recent work I've done in collaboration with the Associated Press has underscored this, that we've seen a near doubling of chronic absenteeism among students in the '21 - '22 school year. And all the data available [00:04:30] to us suggests that has persisted into the '22 - '23 school year, and to suggest a large scale failure of many kids to fully reintegrate into schooling as we knew it before the pandemic.

Dan Schwartz (04:43):

Yeah. So tell us more about that research. Part of my reaction to learning loss if I'm feeling jaded is does it really matter if kids graduate with one year less of schooling? At 12th grade you're not doing anything anyway, so [00:05:00] I can be sort of jaded. But then, if there's this part where there's sort of these lingering effects that are just going to keep cascading through the system, I start to get very, very worried. So say more about how you found out.

Tom Dee (05:12):

Yeah. Well, on how we found out, I mean this was really my work and my collaborators at the Associated Press most recently trying to infill the deep inadequacies of the data systems that the pandemic has exposed. Because I had been hearing scattered anecdotal accounts from districts [00:05:30] and a state or two that my gosh, chronic absenteeism has really spiked. And so there was a kind of folk wisdom among the cognoscente that this appeared to be a problem, but nothing like comprehensive data.

(05:43):

So I mounted this effort to go state by state and collect, verify and draw together those data, and that was the substance of the report that I put out in August. And the linked reporting from the Associated Press have documented that doubling, basically an additional [00:06:00] six and a half million kids in K-12 public schools are now chronically absent.

Denise Pope (06:06):

Tom, can you define chronically absent, because I don't know if people understand what that actually means?

Tom Dee (06:11):

Yeah, that's a great point. Thanks, Denise. It basically refers to kids who are missing 10% or more of school days for any reason, excused or unexcused. The typical school year has about 180 school days, so we're talking about kids missing typically 18 days or more. And this is a metric [00:06:30] that's really come into broad use as a kind of index for barriers to learning under the federal Every Student Succeeds Act. Because schools were given a lot more flexibility to move beyond test scores and thinking about how they were meeting kids' needs, and chronic absenteeism became kind of instantiated as a very widely used measure.

(06:51):

And that's why I was able to collect these data because for the last five or six years, virtually all states have been reporting that. So we were able to get data covering [00:07:00] 92% of school kids across the US.

Denise Pope (07:04):

So it's missing 18 days. They don't have to be all in a row, just 18 days-

Tom Dee (07:09):

That's right-

Denise Pope (07:10):

... the course of a school year. What was interesting is you said excused or unexcused absences.

Tom Dee (07:16):

That's right. And it's very intentionally meant to be this sort of very broad index for, could be in school, out of school factors that are just inhibiting kids opportunities to learn.

Denise Pope (07:27):

Because you get Covid and [00:07:30] you can't go back when you're testing positive. That's practically in the old days, that was 14 days. I know it's less now. I think it's like five or six at schools, but still, you're like a third of the way there, you get Covid once.

Tom Dee (07:41):

I think that's right. And that raises the questions of how do we understand this sharp rise in chronic absenteeism? And I tried to engage that in my analysis. I think we're going to need richer, more disaggregated data to do this really definitively.

(07:54):

But basically I linked the state level growth in chronic absenteeism to a variety of candidate [00:08:00] factors that might explain it, the prevalence of Covid infections during that year kids were returning to school, the presence of bans on wearing masks or requirements to wear masks, information on CDC data on the deterioration in student mental health over this period, enrollment change. We might think that the differential exodus from public schools during the pandemic could mechanically create changes in the chronic absenteeism rate.

(08:30):

[00:08:30] None of these seem to explain the state level growth. Only one thing really did. And that was the extent to which during the previous 2020 - '21 school year, schools had been in remote only instruction. If the schools had been closed during that first full school year during the pandemic, predicted much higher chronic absenteeism when kids returned to school in fall of 2021.

(08:58):

So again, this is just [00:09:00] correlational, it's not definitive evidence, but it's consistent with the idea that the major factor was kids falling out of the habit of going to school or maybe parents no longer seeing the value in regular school attendance.

Dan Schwartz (09:14):

So Tom, the threshold of 10% is interesting to me. How do you choose it? I guess the question behind it is, is there a strong linear slope between absenteeism and school grades [00:09:30] or school achievement tests, or is it more of a dogleg that suddenly when you hit 18 days, test scores start to get affected?

Tom Dee (09:38):

Yeah, I don't think there's anything sacrosanct about that particular threshold. The way researchers commonly do, they alight upon it for a variety of reasons. But we see similar reductions in attendance. And all the evidence I've seen is that across all margins, attending school more is beneficial to kids on a variety of outcome indicators. [00:10:00] But there's nothing particularly sacred about the way we've chosen to define.

Dan Schwartz (10:05):

I'm worried about parents out there. If their kid misses four days, are they going to do worse, like six days or should the parents relax?

Tom Dee (10:14):

I think first they should relax 'cause being relaxed probably makes them better parents, but they should also try to make sure their kids are in school as much as they can healthfully be.

Dan Schwartz (10:29):

When [00:10:30] you were a kid, did your parents let you skip school and did they force you to make it up?

Denise Pope (10:36):

I was a kid a long time ago, Dan. That's asking me to really think back. I can tell you, it's sort of funny that you're asking this because we have this story in my family that my grandmother tells about missing school. So I'm going to sidestep that question and just tell you the grandma story for a second, which is I don't know why, but this comes up at family dinners where she'll say, "You know, I was absent on the one day that they [00:11:00] were teaching square root," and she always would say square root. And she said, "And I've regretted it my whole life."

(11:07):

So when any of our kids or at this dinner would say, "Oh, they weren't excited to go back to school," or whatever, she would say, "You know, be careful 'cause you could miss the one day where you learn square root." And so it's like ...

Dan Schwartz (11:19):

I had that experience.

Denise Pope (11:21):

What do you mean?

Dan Schwartz (11:22):

Oh, it was statistics in graduate school and there was one day where I was tired too much and I missed it. And it's turned out every year a graduate [00:11:30] student asks me exactly about the thing I missed. And I bluff. I do a good job of bluffing, but it is pretty amazing. It was that one, one day.

(11:44):

Tom, time to recover. How are schools doing? Anything working especially well?

Tom Dee (11:51):

I think we've got a few bright spots. I mean, there's a great deal of enthusiasm, for example, around providing tutoring opportunities for kids, though I think [00:12:00] real challenges in doing that well and at scale.

(12:03):

I think I'm also encouraged by the fact there's really good evidence on tier one initial strategies to promote school attendance among kids and tactics that are low cost and scalable with fidelity. In particular, there've been a number of carefully designed experiments that simply will communicate to parents through texting or through postcards, personalized information about how their child is [00:12:30] doing, that they might be missing too much school.

(12:33):

And there's some interesting design elements that are kind of psychologically informed that can enhance the impact of that. So for example, what in the literature is called social norming, saying this is where your kid is and this is where their classroom peers are. Adding that little bit of social context can be impactful.

(12:50):

And also attending to the language used in that communication, making it less judgmental and instead kind of underscoring shared purpose around having kids [00:13:00] attend school regularly. But getting that communication out is low cost, can be done at scale with great fidelity. And I think any school district that's not doing that now should really look into making that happen.

Dan Schwartz (13:13):

Tom, you're going to get a postcard from me pretty soon about the social norms of faculty.

Denise Pope (13:19):

Who else is showing up?

Tom Dee (13:20):

I don't think I'll be alone.

Denise Pope (13:23):

Is part of this just making it more attractive to go to school, making school more fun and exciting? Is part of this just like [00:13:30] school seems like boring and they took all the fun stuff away?

Tom Dee (13:34):

Well, I don't know that the school has changed per se, as much as just people's sense of engagement with it. I think we really, this is purely subjective on my part, as I said again in my home office, but we fell out of the habit of regularly going to the place of work or study, and I think that's proved enduring for kids in ways that are going to be problematic.

Dan Schwartz (13:57):

So Denise, you underestimate habits. [00:14:00] I'm wearing pajamas now at the office so..

Denise Pope (14:03):

We got out of the habit of coming in every day. That was our kids that were the adults. That was a bunch of us. Right? That's one theory.

Dan Schwartz (14:13):

So Tom, you did some interesting work on a reading curriculum or an interesting approach that showed some catch up effects. So talk a little bit about this study and intervention.

Tom Dee (14:24):

Yeah. And this is part of the Science of Reading debate, which I just think is one of the most fascinating issues in education [00:14:30] research and policy right now. Many listeners may be familiar with the decades-long reading wars, which basically had researchers and policymakers sparring over the best way to teach, in particular young learners how to read. And it pitted an older tradition of more phonics-based instruction against a newer tradition based on whole language and then a kind of middle ground called balanced literacy that purported to combine the two.

(14:59):

So there's been [00:15:00] that long-standing debate, but a shift in recent years I think, and a sense that the science of reading, which includes for young readers more phonics-based instruction is really the right way to go. Now the problem we have is that efforts to really make that happen in the classroom simply haven't worked.

(15:20):

There was a major federal initiative as part of No Child Left Behind that had no effects on student outcomes. And there've been a variety of state level initiatives that purport [00:15:30] to push out and encourage teachers to use science of reading practices and haven't really worked.

(15:36):

Now, we studied a California initiative that targeted the 70 lowest achieving elementary schools in California and came out of a legal settlement. The state had been sued for violating its constitutional obligation to educate children and to provide them with early literacy skills. As a result, they took around $50 million and directed it towards science [00:16:00] of reading pedagogy in these schools. And in a recent study with a �� doctoral student, we found looking over the first two years of that program that it really appears to be working. It's moving the needle on reading achievement in meaningful ways.

Denise Pope (16:14):

Okay. I have a hypothesis about this, and you can shoot me down, Tom 'cause you're the expert, but here's my hypothesis. When I was reading about this, they said they weren't just handing people a curriculum to use saying, "This is the Science of Reading curriculum, use it." But that money was going toward professional [00:16:30] development for educators, it was involving parents in this, and maybe you can say more about that, but it was doing a lot more than just saying, "Go back to those boring phonics instruction books."

Tom Dee (16:45):

Yeah, this is such an important question Denise, because I think generally in education, when we see a policy effort that appears to have been impactful, we have such trouble replicating it and doing it a second time. So I think it's really important to pay attention to the unique design and implementation [00:17:00] details of what went on with this money. And it was this, seems like this delicate balance between being prescriptive and also providing school flexibility.

(17:08):

So just to sketch it out briefly, they began by offering eligible schools money to develop school level literacy action plans and support in the contours of that, making it consistent with the science of reading.

(17:23):

Then they provided oversight of those plans and looked at the proposed budgets before approving them. They gave [00:17:30] schools, it was over half a million dollars for three years to implement those plans on average and gave them broad spending guidelines, four different categories that could include professional development for teachers, additional instructional support staff, strategies for family and engagement, money for new textbooks and things of that sort. So broad guidelines, but then flexibility within them for schools to kind of design their own plan.

(17:56):

So I think these kind of design features are probably really critical [00:18:00] for the early success of this program. That balance of being prescriptive in evidence-based ways and flexible in ways that engage substantive change within the school and ultimately critically within the classroom.

Dan Schwartz (18:15):

So is it possible that the gains were just because the school got aligned as opposed to the science of reading? Everybody's lined up, right? They're consistent. They're coherent. There's an agreement. Is it possible this is what's driving these results [00:18:30] as opposed to the science of reading?

Tom Dee (18:32):

Well, that might be because there is that embedded in it, but there's always this challenge in understanding the impact of these kinds of policy initiatives because they're so multifaceted. And so there's often this effort when we see it's having an effect to say, "Okay, I see it was doing seven different things." It probably compelled some instructional coherence and alignment as you're describing along with the science of reading.

(18:57):

And so people will commonly ask what the special [00:19:00] sauce is. And I'm at a point where sometimes I think that question is too reductive and to think that there could be one singular silver bullet within it because they may interact in ways that aren't additive and they really have to be there together as complements.

(19:18):

But if we were to learn, it was really about forcing instructional coherence and alignment, I'm happy to claim that is the reason for the success. I have no history in the reading wars, [00:19:30] but I'd be curious what perspectives you guys have on that long-standing debate.

Denise Pope (19:35):

Well, there's actually an entire School's In show on the reading wars where Dan and I enter into a debate with Rebecca Silverman here, who's at the School of Education. So our listeners can find that one. It's a very juicy, interesting debate that if my memory serves, Dan and I completely lost to whatever the competition was that Rebecca was setting up about is it this or this? And we always [00:20:00] chose the wrong one. So I don't know. Dan, do you have a strong opinion, phonics versus whole language?

Dan Schwartz (20:05):

I'm a math science guy.

Denise Pope (20:08):

Way to skirt.

Dan Schwartz (20:09):

How's that?

(20:09):

Way to skirt the issue.

Denise Pope (20:10):

The thing I always wonder is how these wars get started is a war between ... I mean, it's like two faculty member quibbling with each other. How did it become a war?

Tom Dee (20:19):

Well, I think this is actually really fascinating. For all the attention that reading wars and the science of reading has received, at some level I feel it's as if it's not enough. Because when I think about [00:20:30] if you believe the science of reading and phonics-based instruction for early readers is important, the scale at which we've been failing is at some level mind-numbing 'cause surveys indicate that something like 80% of teachers are using three cueing methods in the classroom and have been doing so for something like four decades.

Denise Pope (20:50):

Three cueing. Tom, you want to just tell, again, tell our listeners-

Tom Dee (20:53):

Oh, sorry. Three cueing is an instructional method sometimes associated with balanced literacy, but really grounded [00:21:00] in whole language. And the idea is you don't have to be didactic in teaching students phonemic awareness, the sounds of words and their components and how to sight read. Instead, you have them draw clues from the context, the sentence, any graphical images available, et cetera.

(21:17):

And so the science of reading would emphatically discredit that type of three cueing instruction. Yet we've been doing it at scale for decades, and my rough calculations suggest in our nation of over 300 million [00:21:30] people, that implies that something like 200 million people have been taught a foundational academic skill the wrong way. So that's really striking, and-

Dan Schwartz (21:40):

Okay, maybe I do have an opinion...

Denise Pope (21:43):

Okay. I was waiting for this. Go ahead, Dan.

Tom Dee (21:45):

I knew I could draw him out.

Dan Schwartz (21:46):

Yeah, yeah. So meaning-based approaches where you're trying to figure things out and connect them are really important. You need to learn to interpret a passage, and that's meaning making. You can do it at the word level. What must this [00:22:00] word be?

(22:01):

On the other hand, there is some value at just memorizing routinized things like recognizing that BR is a blend and this is how you pronounce it. So I would've assumed that the blended would've won, except there's probably a mistake in the execution of the blending.

(22:16):

But you need both. I mean, I haven't memorized every word that exists. I have to look at some and figure it out, and I may not use context. I may sound it out.

Tom Dee (22:26):

So I think part of the confusion here too though, is that people think the science of reading [00:22:30] is just phonics.

Denise Pope (22:31):

Yes.

Tom Dee (22:32):

It's phonics at early stages, but there are different science of reading for the kinds of comprehension and fluency you're describing. But it's just that the phonemic awareness and sight reading and all of those foundational skills are where you need to begin.

Dan Schwartz (22:47):

The number of times someone, I try to explain to someone that there's a different way to learn that might be more effective. And they say to me, "No, no, no, no. I learned that way. I did just fine." And my response to them is, "You [00:23:00] may have other people didn't work so well for."

Tom Dee (23:03):

I would just quickly note how we got here too, because based on what I've read about the evolution of the reading wars, at some level the villain is siloed academic scholarship. The fact that these different intellectual traditions were able to persist in isolation because intellectual communities within the academy were not talking to each other and engaging with each other sufficiently. And so that allowed those who were closer [00:23:30] with teacher training to have one view and another community to have a very different view. And we need to do better collectively, I think.

Denise Pope (23:38):

So important. So true. Thank you so much, Tom. What a great show.

Dan Schwartz (23:43):

I agree. Thank you, Tom.

(23:47):

The past year or so, we've finally started learning how consequential Covid was for our students and where the effects are taking place. So thank you.

Denise Pope (23:55):

100%. Now, as good educators, we like to end our [00:24:00] lessons with some tangible takeaways. So Dan, I'm going to put you on the spot. Are you ready for this? What stood out to you?

Dan Schwartz (24:08):

What stood out to me is that Tom's research just clearly shows that absenteeism is a problem that we need to get under control. You know some districts have had successes, but overall, getting kids back to school has been harder than everybody anticipated.

Denise Pope (24:20):

Oh my goodness, way harder than people anticipated.

(24:24):

You know another thing we heard was that schools need better communication strategies with parents and students. So [00:24:30] I'm thinking when Tom mentioned things like getting in front of parents more with text messages or other interesting low cost ways to just inform them and nudge them, it's really about ditching the judgment and together focusing on the shared purpose.

Dan Schwartz (24:50):

Okay, so that gets folks back in. Now we need to catch them up.

Denise Pope (24:51):

We absolutely do. Tom mentioned that a lot of schools are having success with tutoring, and I know there's a lot of research to back that up. Also, [00:25:00] we probably need to shed old ways of teaching and really be open to adopting more evidence-based approaches.

Dan Schwartz (25:06):

Tom did mention a recent study on a reading program that's boosting student achievement. It's a great example of how targeted evidence-based strategies can make a significant impact.

Denise Pope (25:16):

Well said, Dan. Thank you again to our guest, Tom Dee, for this thoughtful conversation. And thank you all for joining us on this episode of School's In. Remember to subscribe to our show on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your [00:25:30] podcasts. I'm Denise Pope.

Dan Schwartz (25:32):

And I'm Dan Schwartz.

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Faculty mentioned in this article: Dan Schwartz , Denise Pope , Thomas S. Dee

�� GSE welcomes two new faculty members

Olivia Peterkin — Wed, 10 Jul 2024 18:35:39 +0000

�� GSE welcomes two new faculty members

Olivia Peterkin Wed, 07/10/2024 - 11:35

(Photo: Andrew Brodhead)

Announcements | Campus Life | Faculty and Programs

Maisha T. Winn studies equity and restorative justice, and Christina Krist researches teaching and science education.

July 10, 2024

By Olivia Peterkin

As the �� Graduate School of education (GSE) continues to innovate and expand with the goal of improving lives through learning, so too does its faculty.

In the coming months, two new professors — Maisha T. Winn and Christina Krist — will be bringing their expertise to the GSE and the �� Accelerator for Learning in efforts to further the school’s mission.

“Maisha and Christina bring unique perspectives and experience to the GSE. Both are exceptional scholars who share a deep commitment to teachers and students,” said Dan Schwartz, the I. James Quillen Dean of the GSE. “I’m thrilled to welcome them to our community.”

Maisha Winn started at the GSE on July 1. (Photo: Christie Gimpel)

Maisha T. Winn

For Winn, MA ‘98, her new roles as professor of education and faculty director of the Accelerator’s initiative for equity in learning mark a return to the GSE, where she earned a master’s degree in Language, Literacy and Culture. She followed that up with a PhD in Language, Literacy & Culture from the University of California, Berkeley.

“After completing my master’s program, I was confident that I would continue my journey in the academy and that I wanted to be a researcher,” said Winn, whose scholarship focuses on restorative justice and contemporary and historical perspectives in Black education. “It was such a sacred and special time in terms of being introduced to a body of research, literature and thinking that really inspired me.”

Winn’s upcoming book, “Futuring Black Lives: Independent Black Institutions and the Literary Imagination,” will be published next year. It examines the ideas and writings of leaders in Black institution building during the Black Arts Movement (1965-1975) and puts them in contemporary perspective. Winn says these “historical signals” provide context for equity work.

Winn comes to �� from the University of California, Davis, School of Education, where she was the Chancellor’s Leadership Professor and co-founder and faculty director of the school’s Transformative Justice in Education Center.

In her new role with the Accelerator, she will build on existing equity-focused work across the accelerator, spearhead projects that address disparities in educational outcomes, and foster collaborations with community organizations and educational institutions.

“I think this is such an exciting time right now for �� and the GSE,” Winn said. “The Accelerator is a source of such innovative thinking for how we can solve really important issues that are impacting young people in the country, all over the world, and across silos and disciplines.”

Winn started on July 1.

Christina Krist will join the GSE on September 1. (Photo: Michelle Hassel)

Christina Krist

Krist will join the GSE as an associate professor of education, with a focus on science education. Her first day is September 1.

Her research focuses on teacher education, and how to make science education more humanizing and equitable for students. She comes to �� after seven years as an assistant professor of curriculum and instruction at University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign.

“I was drawn to the fact that the GSE seems like a place where there’s this strong commitment to teacher education and teacher learning,” Krist said. “There’s also this culture of theoretical development and innovation that makes me really excited to join the GSE, where I can continue to lean into that line of scholarship.”

Much of her work involves teachers in the classroom, including her recent research about creating a professional development model for high school teachers to adapt curricula to student knowledge.

Krist earned her bachelor’s degree in biology from Grinnell College in Iowa, and her PhD in learning sciences from Northwestern University. She’s won several awards and fellowships, including the 2023 early career research award from NARST: A global organization for improving science education through research, and the 2020 reviewer of the year award from Journal of the Learning Sciences.

While at the GSE she expects to work with students and faculty to study, explore and build on what excellence in science education looks like.

“I look forward to building this community at the GSE where we think about science education, what we want it to look like, and how we go about making it so,” she said.

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Faculty and Research

Faculty mentioned in this article: Dan Schwartz , Maisha Winn

Faculty and Programs

������������ research fellowship centers community voices for research on school-to-prison pipeline

Centering community voices

Equipping formerly incarcerated adults with research skills

Learning design: AI and machine learning for the adult learner

Public service for a new generation, with Tom Ehrlich

Learning from before and building toward more: ������������ GSE pilot course teaches the history of California education

Doing the homework

Sharing with the class

In first novel, ������������ scholar explores challenges faced by college presidents

������������ professor elected president of the National Academy of Education

Two ������������ education professors appointed to endowed chairs

Philip Fisher

Maisha T. Winn

Cultivating a generation of education innovators activating learning science

Exploring entrepreneurship and learning science

Post-pandemic learning: Where are the kids?

������������ GSE welcomes two new faculty members

Maisha T. Winn

Christina Krist

�� research fellowship centers community voices for research on school-to-prison pipeline

Learning from before and building toward more: �� GSE pilot course teaches the history of California education

In first novel, �� scholar explores challenges faced by college presidents

�� professor elected president of the National Academy of Education

Two �� education professors appointed to endowed chairs

�� GSE welcomes two new faculty members