News

Annie McKee offered tips for adjusting to the return to in-person work, such as reconnecting with coworkers. “We've all changed as a result of the pandemic,” she said. “Get to know people again and give yourself the permission to … care about each other.”

Penn GSE’s dean and peers from the Learning Policy Institute advocate for accelerating systems change in the wake of the pandemic.

Dean Pam Grossman said technology has yet to significantly disrupt education or replace the need for teachers. “Teaching and learning are fundamentally relational processes, and without the relationship, it’s hard to engage learners, particularly those that aren’t motivated,” she said.

Perna: “We have seen so many proposals for free college and debt relief in the past year, even amidst a pandemic, because the painfully high cost of a degree is stifling another generation of young people and continuing to shut out minority and low-income Americans."

This spring, Garrett became Assistant Dean for Student Affairs in Yale’s Office of Gender & Campus Culture and the Alcohol and Other Drugs Harm Reduction Initiative.

Caroline Watts, Diane Waff, Zachary Herrmann, Marsha Richardson, and Regina Bynum were selected to implement their initiative “Bridging Gaps and Building Capacity: Student and Educator Supports for School Reopening in Learning Network 2.” The initative will provide evidence-based programming and professional development at one to two summer learning sites in West Philadelphia, followed by network-wide professional learning supports throughout the 2021-22 academic year.

College costs are complicated, but that's not an excuse to hide important information, Laura Perna says.

Penn GSE students preparing for counseling careers have strived to deliver mental health services to vulnerable populations via virtual internships while studying remotely themselves.

Thirteen inaugural members are working to help Penn GSE create spaces for graduates to have meaningful engagement leading to continued professional growth.

The largest fundraising effort in Penn GSE’s history is helping the School realize its five priorities and provide learners with the foundation for lifelong opportunity.

Each year, Penn GSE recognizes the extraordinary impact of the alumni community during the annual Celebration of Educators programming.

Commencement 2021 brings with it a host of honors, recognitions, and awards.

Go vote for teams led by Caroline Ebby and Yasmin Kafai in the Public Choice competition.

Karen Weaver wrote about how the merging of six of Pennsylvania’s state colleges will affect student athletes.

‘To have young people who are taking center stage in the realms that other young people are really sort of using to explore their identity is crucial,’ Ed Brockenbrough recently told USA Today.

Richard Ingersoll spoke about the pandemic’s impact on the teaching workforce and suggested that the economy’s recovery could increase teacher turnover and retirements.

Ryan Baker is quoted on how the pandemic has necessitated innovation in remote learning, noting that, “There’s been a move to using high-quality interactive online learning environments.”

"It’s going to be a sort of an identifier for folks who lived through this, and we don’t really know what the mental health impacts are on us,” Ariane Thomas said.

Marcus Wright, a doctoral student in higher education, found that when colleges had to talk about COVID-19, they rarely prioritized first-generation students.

Laura Perna pointed to equity gaps in labor market returns for people who hold the same type of college credential, noting that the risk of taking out a loan to attend college isn’t distributed equally in society.

Ebony Elizabeth Thomas and Yasmin Kafai will also lead sessions at AERA’s annual meeting.

‘It’s kind of like one lever that has a lot of dominoes fall into place once it’s pulled,’ says Katie Barghaus.

"For so many Black families who experience this, the hardest part is about getting people to believe it happened and care." — Howard Stevenson

In the Conversation, Laura Perna, Jeremy Wright-Kim, and Elaine Leigh examine the design of free college programs and how the design influences their effectiveness.

“It feels like it hasn’t quite let up. Neither has the request for support,” Penn GSE counseling lecturer Ariane Thomas told WHYY.

Dorinda Carter Andrews, a professor and chairperson of the Department of Teacher Education at Michigan State University, joined Penn GSE faculty, staff, and students as part of the Visiting Faculty Scholars of Color lecture series, now in its 13th year.

Penn GSE’s teacher education, higher education administration, and education policy programs among the nation’s best.

Karen Weaver spoke about gender inequity in the NCAA. “There’s a number of inequitable decisions that have been made in addition to the ones we talked about this year that just haven't drawn the same amount of attention,” she said.

Richard Ingersoll spoke about how schools and school boards are working to meet demands from parents and lawmakers. “All these demands by parents are very understandable, such as lower class size,” said Ingersoll. “Who wouldn’t want their child to be in a class of 18? And, yes, let’s teach Mandarin and, yes, let’s bring back Latin. There are so many demands but very little recognition of the costs.”

In University World News, Laura Perna and William Tierney write “Academic life, as we have lived it, and as we envision it for you, is about challenging norms and creating a society that foments democracy.”

Writing in MIT’s Sloan Management Review, Adam Payne, an alum of Penn GSE’s Chief Learning Officer program, and Dana Kaminstein, an adjunct assistant professor at Penn GSE, point to ways that companies dodge diversity and how they can go beyond diversity initiatives to create meaningful change.

Techniques and games from theater can be fun tools for building classroom engagement and tackling content in new ways.

Nelson Flores said that instead of debating whether or not an institution should use the word “Latinx,” people should try to understand why the word is used.

Penn GSE’s Howard Stevenson and Nancy Hornberger will be inducted at the National Academy of Education (NAEd) at November’s NAEd Annual Meeting.

Pam Grossman proposes rethinking schooling to give students more time to learn. “Let’s use the pandemic to rethink how we expand and enrich learning time for children, especially those most impacted by COVID-19-related disruption.”

Applications for the prestigious competition will be accepted until April 20.

From teaching to research, doctoral candidate OreOluwa Badaki takes an intergenerational, interdisciplinary approach to environmental justice.

Writing in ASCD Express, Zachary Herrmann and Dean Pam Grossman define some of the challenges facing teacher professional development and how we might address them.

Sharon Ravitch and Reima Shakeir recently released case studies of eight philanthropies operating in the Global South.

Laura Perna talks about her research, issues of college access, affordability and success for first-generation, under-resourced students and why she has dedicated her life to this specific research.

Catalyst @ Penn GSE prepared a two-week primer on the evolving higher education marketplace for representatives from HP.

‘It’s time for college athletics to put their considerable wealth and purchasing power behind supporting black-owned businesses,’ Karen Weaver writes in Forbes.

Jonathan Zimmerman talks about his latest book and the state of education in the U.S. In addition to failing to teach people how to distinguish information from disinformation, the education system hasn’t taught them to engage across differences, Zimmerman says. “The only institution that has even a chance of intervening in that,” he says, “is a school.”

Nominations for the 2021 McGraw Prizes in Education are open through April 15.

Richard Ingersoll said that admission standards for elementary teaching programs are already low, certainly compared to other professions such as medicine and law. The solution presented to address shortages in the national teacher workforce has been to “widen the gate and lower the bar,” but lowering academic standards “any further doesn’t make much sense,” Ingersoll said.

GSE students are making a difference with their work around the world.

Ameena Ghaffar Kucher interviewed Pakistani American students in New York and observed that they transformed “the negative experience of being ostracized into a positive experience of solidarity and group membership with other Muslims, both in their immediate community and globally.”

Yasmin Kafai and professors across several departments at Utah State University have partnered to create an imaginary virus, allowing students to virtually explore many aspects of living in a pandemic. Children can play in this risk-free environment with more control than they often have in the real world.