Learning Research and Development Center

Anthony S. Bryk is the ninth president of The Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching. He held the Spencer Chair in Organizational Studies in the School of Education and the Graduate School of Business at Stanford University from 2004 until assuming Carnegie’s presidency in September 2008. He came to Stanford from the University of Chicago where he was the Marshall Field IV Professor of Urban Education in the sociology department, and where he helped found the Center for Urban School Improvement, which supports reform efforts in the Chicago Public Schools. He also created the Consortium on Chicago School Research, a federation of research groups that have produced a range of studies to advance and assess urban school reform. His current research and practice interests focus on the organizational redesign of schools and school systems and the integration of technology into schooling to enhance teaching and learning.

Dr. Bryk received his BS from Boston College and his EdD from the Harvard Graduate School of Education. Bryk has received the Palmer A. Johnson Award, the American Educational Research Association Division H Research Utilization Award, and the Willard Waller Award from the American Sociological Association. His books include Hierarchical Linear Models (with Stephen Raudenbush), Catholic Schools and the Common Good (with Valerie Lee and Peter Holland), Chartering Chicago School Reform: Democratic Localism as a Lever for Change (with Penny Bender Sebring et al.), and Trust in Schools (with Barbara Schneider).

Cynthia E. Coburn is Assistant Professor in Policy, Organization, Measurement, and Evaluation at the Graduate School of Education, University of California at Berkeley. Her research brings the tools of organizational sociology to understand the relationship between instructional policy and teachers' classroom practices in urban schools. She has studied these issues in the context of state and national reading policy, attempts to scale-up innovative school reform programs, and district-wide professional development initiatives. Current projects include a study of the role of school leaders in mediating between reading policy and teachers' classroom practice, and a study of teachers' social networks and curriculum implementation. She also co-directs an investigation of innovative efforts to reconfigure the relationship between research and practice in education.

Coburn has won multiple awards recognizing her scholarship. In 2002, she won the Award for Outstanding Dissertation from Division L (policy and politics) of the American Educational Research Association. More recently, she won the Palmer O. Johnson Award for outstanding article in an AERA journal and the Albert J. Harris Award for outstanding research contribution to the understanding of prevention or assessment of reading or learning disabilities from the International Reading Association. She has published widely in the major journals in her field and is currently co-editing a book on the relationship between research and practice for school improvement. Coburn has a BA from Oberlin College and a MA in Sociology and PhD in Education from Stanford University.

Joan Ferrini-Mundy is the Director of the National Science Foundation’s (NSF) Division of Research on Learning in Formal and Informal Settings (DRL) in the Directorate for Education and Human Resources.  DRL houses four main programs:  Discovery Research K-12; Research and Evaluation on Education in Science and Engineering Education; the Informal Science Education Program; and Innovative Technology Experiences for Teachers and Students. As an Intergovernmental Personnel Act employee at NSF Dr. Ferrini-Mundy continues to hold appointments at Michigan State University as a University Distinguished Professor of Mathematics Education and Assistant Vice President for STEM Education Research and Policy. She is a professor in the Departments of Mathematics and Teacher Education.

Dr. Ferrini-Mundy was a Visiting Scientist in NSF’s Teacher Enhancement Program from 1989-1991 and worked at the National Research Council from 1995-1999 as Director of the Mathematical Sciences Education Board and Associate Executive Director of the Center for Science, Mathematics, and Engineering Education. Ferrini-Mundy was an ex officio member of the President’s National Mathematics Advisory Panel (2007-2008), the RAND Mathematics Study Panel, the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) Mathematics Assessment Framework Committee. In Michigan she directed the Michigan Department of Education Teacher Preparation Policy Study Group to advise the Superintendent of Public Instruction about policy reform in teacher preparation (2006-2007) and has served as chair of the Mathematics High School Content Expectations Development Committee. From 1983-1999 Ferrini-Mundy was a member of the Mathematics Department at the University of New Hampshire, and in 1982-1983 she was a mathematics faculty member at Mount Holyoke College, where she co-founded the SummerMath for Teachers Program.
 
Active in professional societies, Ferrini-Mundy has served on the Board of Directors of the National Council of Teachers, and chaired the Writing Group for the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics (NCTM) 2000 Principles and Standards for School Mathematics. She completed a term as a member of the Board of Governors of the Mathematical Association of America in 2006.  She has played leadership roles in several MSU-based projects, including the Carnegie-supported Teachers for A New Era Initiative, the NSF-funded Knowledge of Algebra for Teaching project, and Promoting Rigorous Outcomes in Mathematics/Science Education (PROM/SE), an NSF Mathematics and Science Partnership. Her research interests include calculus teaching and learning, the development and assessment of teachers’ mathematical knowledge for teaching, and mathematics education policy.

Michael J. Feuer is the Executive Director of the Division of Behavioral and Social Sciences and Education (DBASSE), one of six major units in the National Research Council (NRC) of the National Academies. In this capacity he is responsible for conceptualizing, developing, and managing a wide range of studies and other activities in education, demography, social change, economics, and governance, with annual program expenditures of about $20M. Prior to assuming this position Feuer was the first Director of the NRC's Center for Education and the founding Director of the Board on Testing and Assessment. Before joining the NRC in 1993, Feuer was senior analyst and project director at the Office of Technology Assessment (OTA), where he developed, managed, and wrote large sections of studies of education and human resources, educational technology, and psychological measurement.

Feuer holds the Ph.D. in Public Policy from the University of Pennsylvania, where his research focused on mathematical modeling and human resource planning. He also has the MA in public management from the Wharton School, and has studied political science at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and the Sorbonne. Dr. Feuer grew up in New York, and received the BA cum laude from Queens College (CUNY). At Queens he was the campus "stringer" for the New York Times.

Upon earning his doctorate, Dr. Feuer taught at Penn while working at the Higher Education Finance Research Institute. There he developed a model of firm-sponsored education and training based on emerging theories of institutional economics. He then took a faculty position at Drexel University, where he taught economics, public policy, and management; he was awarded early tenure based on research productivity and excellent teaching reviews.

Feuer's most recent work has been focused on evidence and the uses of research for policy. He was the Burton and Inglis Lecturer at Harvard during 2004-05, and the book based on those talks, "Moderating the Debate: Rationality and the Promise of American Education," was published in 2006 by Harvard Education Press.

Feuer was elected to the National Academy of Education in 2003 and as a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 2006. He is an active member of the American Educational Research Association; a senior adviser to the Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities, the Mandel Foundation, and the Jewish People Policy Planning Institute; and has consulted on policy and research in the US, England, and Germany. Feuer is a frequent contributor of book reviews and short essays on education, policy, and current events in the popular and professional press.

Feuer lives in Washington, DC with his wife, Dr. Regine B. Feuer, an obstetrician-gynecologist. The Feuers have two grown children.

Timothy Nokes received his PhD in Psychology from the University of Illinois at Chicago in 2004 and then trained as a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology at the University of Illinois from 2004-2007. He is currently an Assistant Professor of Psychology and a Research Scientist at the Learning Research and Development Center at the University of Pittsburgh. His current research examines processes of conceptual learning, knowledge transfer, and the effects of expertise on collaborative performance.

Christian Schunn is an associate professor of psychology and a research scientist at the Learning Research and Development Center at the University of Pittsburgh. His basic research involves studying experts and novices in complex domains like science, engineering, submarining, and weather forecasting to develop new theoretical and computational models of the cognition underlying expert performance and the difficulties in developing expert-like performance. His applied research involves developing and evaluating tools and curricula informed by this basic research to bring novices to expert performance. Recently, his basic research has involved an interdisciplinary collaboration with cognitive neuroscientists to focus on the nature of the neural systems involved in learning in science and math and using this research to optimize learning environments. At the applied level, Schunn has developed design-based learning curricula for middle and high school science classrooms that have been found to be more successful than existing hands-on and textbook science curricula at teaching basic science concepts, 
scientific reasoning skills, and developing interest in engineering, science, and technology careers. He received his PhD from Carnegie Mellon in 1995.

Mary Kay Stein is Associate Director of the Learning Research and Development Center, as well as Founding Director of the Learning Policy Center. She also holds a joint appointment at the University of Pittsburgh as Professor of Learning Policy and Senior Scientist at the Learning Research and Development Center. Her research in the late 80s focused on classroom-based teaching and learning with the aim of understanding the nature of effective instructional practices in mathematics. In the early 1990s Dr. Stein's research interests expanded to include the school and district contexts of teacher learning and professional development. Most notably, she studied the connections between district policy and classroom practice in New York City's Community School District #2 under Anthony Alvarado, as well as the district-wide instructional reforms in the San Diego City Schools initiated under Alan Bersin and Anthony Alvarado, resulting in a number of widely read articles (e.g., "Inquiry at the crossroads of policy and learning: A study of a district-wide literacy initiative" in Teachers College Record, 104) and a book (Reform as Learning: School Reform, Organizational Culture, and Community Politics in San Diego.) Currently, she is investigating how the teacher learning demands of different curricula (Everyday Mathematics vs. Investigations) can influence teacher learning in large-scale reforms in two urban districts. A hallmark of Dr. Stein's work is her ability to keep both the details of instructional practice and attention to policy in the same frame of analysis (see, for example, Architectures for Learning: A Comparative Analysis of Two Urban Districts).

Over the past several years, Dr. Stein has been a principal or co-principal investigator of a number of grants from both public (the National Science Foundation) and private (Spencer, MacArthur) foundations. Dr. Stein has served on several national panels including the National Academy of Education's Panel on Strengthening the Capacity of Research to Impact Policy and Practice, the National Institute for Science Education's Professional Development Project, and NCTM's Standards Impact Research Group.

Vivian Tseng  is the Program Officer at the William T. Grant Foundation. As a member of the Foundation's Senior Program Team, she is responsible for setting program directions, developing and implementing new initiatives, reviewing proposals, and working with grantees post-award. She has worked to develop the Foundation's research interests in youth’s everyday settings and in the use of research evidence in policy and practice. She also oversees the William T. Grant Scholars Program for promising early-career researchers. Her empirical research has focused on understanding how immigration, race, and culture affect youth and their families. She was formerly Assistant Professor in Psychology and Asian American Studies at California State University, Northridge. She received her Ph.D. in Community Psychology with a minor in Quantitative Methods and concentration in Developmental Psychology from New York University, and her B.A. in Psychology and specialization in Asian American Studies at the University of California, Los Angeles.

Grover J. “Russ” Whitehurst is a senior fellow and director of the Brown Center on Education Policy at The Brookings Institution. Previously he was director of the Institute of Education Sciences at the U.S. Department of Education; U.S. Assistant Secretary for Educational Research and Improvement; Chair of the Department of Psychology at the State University of New York at Stony Brook; Academic Vice-President of the Merrill-Palmer Institute. He received his Ph.D. in experimental child psychology from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 1970. He is a widely respected and influential leader in education research and policy in the U.S. and around the world. His specializations include program evaluation, teacher quality, preschools, national and international student assessments, reading instruction, education technology, and education data systems.

As the first director of the Institute of Education Sciences within the U.S. Department of Education, he is widely acknowledged to have had a transforming effect on the quality, relevance, and utilization of education research. Under his leadership, the Institute received numerous accolades, including a citation from the Office of Management and Budget for having, “transformed the quality and rigor of education research within the Department of Education and increased the demand for scientifically based evidence of effectiveness in the education field as a whole.”

Prior to his federal service, he was a highly productive university-based researcher, with over 100 publications, the editorship of a leading scientific journal, and a high impact on other scholars in his field. A program he developed to enhance school readiness in children from low-income families, Dialogic Reading, is widely used in preschools around the world. He was a pioneer in delivering college-level instruction through the internet, for which he was awarded the Microsoft Innovators in Higher Education Award in 1996.

He is an experienced and sought-after speaker. He has appeared on the major network news shows, been interviewed and written about by leading newspapers, given congressional testimony on numerous occasions, and delivered hundreds of speeches and public presentations.

He has had a significant influence of international education policy through his service as head of the U.S. delegation to the Education Policy Committee of the Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development, membership on the Board of Directors of the UNESCO Institute of Statistics, involvement in planning UNESCO literacy conferences, and work on improving teacher quality for the G8-Broader Middle East North Africa Initiative.

He believes that the welfare of the U.S. and the world depends on every person receiving a good and appropriate education, that education delivery systems should be effective and efficient, and that generating and using better evidence is critical to achieving these goals.