School of Education & Social Policy

Faculty News
New Faces
Jeannette Colyvas Jeannette Colyvas, who holds a doctorate in education from Stanford University, has joined the faculty as an assistant professor of learning and organizational change. Her research interests include entrepreneurship, innovation and institutional analysis.
Edd Taylor Edd Taylor comes to the School of Education and Social Policy from the University of Wisconsin, where he was an assistant professor in curriculum and instruction for mathematics. His doctorate from the University of California-Berkeley Graduate School of Education is in cognition and development.


Grants
Thomas McDade, Emma Adam, Greg Duncan, Thomas Cook, Lindsay Chase-Lansdale and Douglas Massey, National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, "Social Influences on Early Adult Stress Biomarkers," $1,878,981; M. Shalowitz, Emma Adam, Greg Duncan, Christopher Kuzawa, McDade, Bruce Spencer, National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, "Community Action for Child Health Equity-Cook County, Illinois," $357,675.
Emma Adam Greg Duncan Thomas Cook Chase-Lansdale, P. Lindsay Bruce Spencer
Barton Hirsch and Larry Hedges, William T. Grant Foundation ($843,729) and Wallace Foundation ($150,000), "Evaluation of Chicago's After School Matters."
Barton Hirsch Larry Hedges
Seon-Young Lee, University of Iowa, "The Efficacy of Academic Acceleration for Gifted Minority Students," $16,363; Alumnae of Northwestern University, "What Needs to Be Considered for Acceleration in Math for Academically Talented Minority Students?" $2,500.
Seon-Young Lee

Brian Reiser, National Science Foundation, "A Learning Progression for Scientific Modeling," $2,922,428.
Brian Reiser
Dan McAdams, Foley Family Foundation of Milwaukee, "The Foley Center for the Study of Lives," $3,225,000.
Dan McAdams
Uri Wilensky, Louis Gomez and Luis Amaral, National Science Foundation, "DHB: Exploring Educational Policy and Change from a Complex Systems Perspective," $749,999; Wilensky, National Science Foundation, "HCC: Advancing the Science of Agent-Based Modeling through Frameworks, Tools and Pedagogies," $447,918
Uri Wilensky Louis Gomez
BACK TO TOP


Honors and Awards
P. Lindsay Chase-Lansdale and David Uttal were awarded fellow status in the Association for Psychological Science (APS) in recognition of "sustained, outstanding contributions to the advancement of psychological science." The association of approximately 18,000 members, previously the American Psychological Society, is dedicated to the advancement of scientific psychology at the national and international level.
Uttal was also appointed associate editor of Merrill-Palmer Quarterly, a journal of developmental psychology.
Chase-Lansdale, P. LindsayDavid Uttal

BACK TO TOP


Publications
Emma Adam Emma Adam, E. K. Snell and P, Pendry, "Sleep Timing and Quantity in Ecological and Family Context," Journal of Family Psychology (2007); A. DeSantis, Adam, L. Doane, S. Mineka, R. Zinbarg and M. Craske, "Racial/Ethnic Differences in Cortisol Diurnal Rhythms in a Community Sample of Adolescents," Journal of Adolescent Health (2007); Pendry and Adam, "Associations between Interparental Discord, Parenting Quality, Parent Emotion and Cortisol Levels in Adolescent and Kindergarten-Aged Children," International Journal of Behavioral Development (2007); Snell, Adam and Greg Duncan, "Sleep and the Body Mass Index and Overweight Status of Children and Adolescents," Child Development (2007).
Carol Lee
 Carol Lee, Culture, Literacy and Learning: Blooming in the Midst of the Whirlwind (2007).
David Rapp
 David Rapp, S. A. Culpepper, K. Kirkby and P. Morin, "Fostering Students' Comprehension of Topographic Maps," Journal of Geoscience Education (2007); Rapp, J. L. Klug and H.A. Taylor, "Character Movement and the Representation of Space during Narrative Comprehension," Memory & Cognition (2006).
James Rosenbaum
 James Rosenbaum, "Prepared for What? Matching Our Rhetoric to Reality," Education Week (2007).
James Spillane's Distributed Leadership In Practice
 James Spillane, Distributed Leadership in Practice (2007).
Lois Trautvetter
 Lois Trautvetter, "Developing Students Searching for Meaning and Purpose," in G. Kramer (Ed.), Fostering Student Success in the Campus Community (2007).
Uri Wilensky Uri Wilensky and K. Reisman, "Thinking like a Wolf, a Sheep or a Firefly: Learning Biology through Constructing and Testing Computational Theories,"Cognition & Instruction (2006); Wilensky and W. Rand, "Making Models Match," Journal of Artificial Societies and Social Simulation (2007); S. T. Levy and Wilensky, "Inventing a 'Mid-Level' to Make Ends Meet: Reasoning through the Levels of Complexity," Cognition & Instruction (2007); D. Abrahamson, M. Berland, R. Shapiro, J. Unterman and Wilensky, "Leveraging Epistemological Diversity through Computer-Based Argumentation in the Domain of Probability," Learning of Mathematics (2006).

BACK TO TOP




Greg Duncan to Preside over Child Development Research Society
Greg Duncan to Preside over Child Development Research SocietyProfessor Greg Duncan was elected to serve as president of the Society for Research in Child Development from 2009 to 2011. He will be the first economist to preside over the Society, a professional association with about 5,500 members who are researchers, practitioners and human development professionals from around the world. SRCD promotes interdisciplinary research on child and adolescent development.

Previously Duncan was elected president of another major research society, the Population Association of America, to serve in 2008. PPA has 3,000 members who are professionals in the population field, including demographers, sociologists, economists and public health professionals.

Duncan is Edwina S. Tarry Professor in Education and Social Policy and a faculty fellow at Northwestern's Institute for Policy Research.

(Photo by Leslie Kossoff/LK Photos)


BACK TO TOP



Carol Lee Named to National Academy, Receives NCTE Award
 Carol Lee Named to National Academy, Receives NCTE AwardBecause of her outstanding scholarship and contributions to education, professor Carol Lee recently received two prestigious honors. She was elected to membership in the National Academy of Education and was selected by the National Council of Teachers of English to receive its Distinguished Service Award. Lee, a former teacher who has been active in Chicago school reform for many years, is known for her pioneering curriculum work based on cultural contexts.

The National Academy, an influential organization limited to 200 U.S. members, is dedicated to advancing high-quality education research and its use in policy. President Lorrie Shepard of the University of Colorado, says, "Carol Lee is a significant scholar and leader in the area of culturally relevant pedagogy. Her work with African American English vernacular and culturally specific discourse practices has shown us how students previously marginalized can be supported and drawn into participation with school-based literary genres. She has contributed important theoretical insights but, most impressively, she has also immersed herself in schools to test her ideas and to make a difference for young people."

The NCTE Distinguished Service Award recognizes valuable professional service, including scholarly distinction and excellence in teaching. A leader in teacher professional development and the advancement of educational research, Lee is past president of the National Conference on Research in Language and Literacy and chair of the standing committee on research of the NCTE. She is also a former trustee of the NCTE Research Foundation and former co-chair of the NCTE Assembly on Research.

In addition to serving on prominent advisory boards in the field of education, Lee has founded several African-centered charter schools in Chicago. She is also the author of two books, Culture, Literacy, and Learning and Signifying as a Scaffold for Literary Interpretation. She has written numerous articles and served as editor of several educational journals. Currently she is a vice president of the American Education Research Association.

(Photo by Kevin Feinstein)


BACK TO TOP

Video Project Aims to Boost Teachers' Insight into Student Thinking
Bruce Sherin (left) talks with Herb Ginsburg of Columbia University about an upcoming video project
Miriam Sherin has researched how video analysis helps teachers
 Bruce Sherin (ABOVE) talks with Herb Ginsburg of Columbia University about an upcoming video project with Miriam Sherin (BELOW), who has researched how video analysis helps teachers.

Photos by ANDREW CAMPBELL and JIM ZIV
 When students struggle with mathematics and science concepts in the classroom, teachers are expected to diagnose student problems and respond on the spot, despite the complexities of the classroom environment. A three-year project using digital video to help teachers understand student thinking and respond effectively has recently been funded by a gift in support of associate professors Miriam and Bruce Sherin from John Martinson and the Martinson Family Foundation.

The digital video project will provide teachers with tiny wearable cameras so they can mark, store, and annotate video clips for later discussion at video clubs. "We will be able to capture a moment in which a teacher faces an on-the-fly challenge so that teachers can reflect on that challenge in a more extended manner," says Miriam Sherin, whose past research has shown the value of video clubs for teachers investigating learning issues.

To help teachers understand what students mean when they express their ideas about mathematics and science, the Sherins will also develop a multimedia system and 100 videotaped interviews with students on various topics.

BACK TO TOP