Teachers Learning in Community: Realities and Possibilities

ABOUT THE AUTHORS

ABOUT THE AUTHORS DICK CORBETT is an independent educational researcher who spends his time studying school reform, primarily in low-income settings. Recent projects include examining efforts funded by the Benwood, NEA, Osborne, Lyndhurst, and Public Education Foundations to raise student achievement at all levels of the Hamilton County, Tennessee school system; the implementation of collaborative learning communities in two New Jersey districts; the effects of the Commonwealth Institute for Parent Leadership’s training program on parents’ subsequent involvement in Kentucky schools; and a Michigan Middle Start pilot initiative to improve math instruction in rural Michigan schools. Past work has entailed investigating several Comprehensive School Reform models, including Middle Start, Onward to Excellence II, Talent Development , Different Ways of Knowing, and the Mississippi Arts Commission ’s Whole Schools Initiative. His three most recently published books are Creating and Sustaining Arts-Based Reform: The A+ Program, coauthored with George Noblit, Monica McKinney, and Bruce Wilson (Routledge, 2008), Effort and Excellence in Urban Classrooms: Expecting —and Getting—Success with All Students, coauthored with Bruce Wilson and Belinda Williams (Teachers College Press, 2002), and Listening to Urban Kids: School Reform and the Teachers They Want (State University of New York Press, 2001), coauthored with Bruce Wilson.Corbett received his PhD in education from the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill. KEN JONES is an associate professor and the director of teacher education at the University of Southern Maine. His interests include classroom assessment, mathematics education, case story development, and policy analysis related to school accountability. He has been a middle 181 school teacher, a district mathematics specialist, and the director of a school-university partnership for teacher professional development. He recently edited Democratic School Accountability: A School Improvement Model (2006, Rowman & Littlefield). DEBRA R. SMITH is director of the Program Evaluation and Research Group at Lesley University. Her experience in education over three decades includes teaching in a variety of settings, from preschool to graduate school; program, curriculum, and assessment design; and research and evaluation. She was the founding director of the Collaborative Inquiry and Development Group at the University of Southern Maine, where she served as a principal investigator for several projects funded by the Lucent Technologies Foundation. Her work over the last several years has focused on teachers’ deepening understanding of students ’ learning through assessment and collaborative inquiry. She holds a PhD from Lesley College. BETTY LOU WHITFORD is dean of the College of Education and Human Development and professor of education at the University of Southern Maine. She has published widely in the areas of school reform and teacher education, including contributions to yearbooks and peerrefereed journals. She taught high school social studies in Virginia Beach, Virginia, and has held academic and research positions at Teachers College, Columbia University; the University of Louisville; and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where she earned her AB, MAT, and PhD degrees. With Ken Jones, she coedited Accountability, Assessment and Teacher Commitment: Lessons from Kentucky’s Reform Efforts (2000, State University of New York Press), and with H. Dickson Corbett she coedited the SUNY series on Restructuring and School Change. BRUCE L. WILSON is an independent researcher. He also has served as an adjunct faculty member at Teachers College, Columbia University. He is currently engaged in several longitudinal research and evaluation projects, all of which focus on improving teaching and learning conditions in schools with populations of high poverty. With support from government agencies, private foundations, and universities, the primary goal of this work is to produce information that will be helpful to schools and agencies helping schools as they refine the work they are doing to improve learning for all students. This research has been published in a wide range of scholarly journals and books. His two most recent books are Effort and Excellence in Urban Classrooms: Expect182 ABOUT THE AUTHORS ing—and Getting—Success with All Students, coauthored with H. Dickson Corbett and Belinda Williams (Teachers College Press, 2002), and Listening to Urban Kids: School Reform and the Teachers They Want (State University of New York Press, 2001), coauthored with H. Dickson Corbett. His academic training was at Stanford University, where he earned an undergraduate degree in sociology and a PhD in sociology of education. DIANE R. WOOD, after twenty years of working in high schools as a teacher and an administrator, earned her doctorate at Teachers College, Columbia University. Currently an associate professor in Initiatives in...