The mission of Penn GSE Perspectives on Urban Education is to provide an interactive forum to investigate critical issues in urban education. The purpose of an electronic journal format is to provide a vehicle for fostering conversations about the complexities of urban education among practitioners, researchers, policymakers and graduate students, groups who often work in isolation from each other. We imagine that the larger community interested in these issues will use the format to provide scholarship, commentary, and critique essential for investigating critical issues in urban education. We hope that the potential for dialogue through an electronic journal will lead to increased cooperation and understanding among all those concerned about urban education.
We encourage graduate students, practitioners, policy makers and researchers to publish studies in progress, as well as findings from completed research. We welcome submissions on a wide variety of topics related to urban schooling, and will also devote specific issues to single themes. In each issue, we plan to include feature-length articles, shorter reports of studies in progress, reviews, commentaries, and opportunities to share comments and questions on the publications. We welcome additional suggestions regarding the use of this electronic format.
Kira Baker-Doyle (Editor) is a doctoral candidate in the Teaching Learning and Curriculum program of the Graduate School of Education at the University of Pennsylvania. She is currently engaged in her dissertation research on the social support networks of first-year teachers. She is also the co-owner of John and Kira's Chocolates, a socially-responsible gourmet food business based in Philadelphia, and a coordinator of TeacherSPACE, a teacher and parent resource center in Philadelphia, PA.
Laura Colket (Web Editor) is a current doctoral student in Educational Leadership at the University of Pennsylvania Graduate School of Education. She also received her M.S.Ed from the University of Pennsylvania, and her B.S. from the University of Massachusetts. Prior to returning to school for her doctorate, Laura managed the Philadelphia office of a national nonprofit, Jumpstart, at Temple University. Her interests include urban teacher education, multicultural teacher education, and school-community partnerships. Laura can be reached at lcolket2@dolphin.upenn.edu.
Amy Bach is a doctoral candidate in the Reading/Writing/Literacy program in the Graduate School of Education at the University of Pennsylvania. Her research interests center around media literacy and the role localized, independent media play in democratic societies; youth-produced documentaries as social commentaries and teaching tools; and the role of visual images in community mobilization and activism.
Carolyn Chernoff is a joint PhD candidate in Sociology and Education, Culture, and Society at the University of Pennsylvania. An ethnographic and qualitative researcher, Chernoff's research interests center on cities, social change, and the arts as well as broadly-defined issues of difference, inclusion, and democracy. She can be reached at chernoff@dolphin.upenn.edu.
Noah D. Drezner is an advanced Ph.D. candidate in higher education in the Policy, Management, and Evaluation Division at the University of Pennsylvania Graduate School of Education in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. He currently holds degrees from the University of Rochester (B.S.) and the University of Pennsylvania (M.S.Ed.). His research interests include philanthropy within minority and special serving institutions and the exploration of how minority serving institutions add to the civic literacy of the nation. Recently, Mr. Drezner published Thurgood Marshall: A study of philanthropy through racial uplift in an edited volume Uplifting a People: African American Philanthropy and Education by Marybeth Gasman and Katherine V. Sedgwick (Peter Lang, 2005) and “Advancing Gallaudet: Alumni Support for the Nation's University for the Deaf and Hard-of-Hearing and its Similarities to Black Colleges and Universities” in the International Journal of Educational Advancement.
Julie Riordan is a fifth-year doctoral student in the Educational Policy program in the Graduate School of Education at the University of Pennsylvania. She is also affiliated with the Consortium for Policy Research in Education (CPRE), where she has been involved in both program evaluation and policy analysis. In her dissertation, she is examining the relationship between NCLB-mandated teacher qualifications and student achievement among elementary school children.
Chris Soto is a fourth year doctoral student at Penn GSE. His primary research interests revolve around the role of emotion in learning and teaching. Chris counseled troubled teenagers for seven years at a therapeutic boarding school in Western Massachusetts. His experiences there led to a belief that students should be educated about their social and emotional lives with the same emphasis as traditional academics. This passion for adolescent well-being led him to Harvard University, where he received a Masters in Human Development and Psychology. Along with his role on the board of the Perspectives of Urban Education Journal, Chris works as a School Counselor at The Charter High School for Architecture and Design, as a research assistant at The Center for the Study of Boys and Girls Lives, and as an Instructor of Child and Adolescent Development for the Teach for America Masters program at Penn.
Rashmi Kumar is a second year doctoral student in the Teaching, Learning and Curriculum program in the Graduate School of Education at the University of Pennsylvania. She is interested in understanding how the dissemination of knowledge regarding learning and teaching about science takes place in urban schools. Another area of her interest lies in exploring parental involvement in curriculum development and evaluation measures. Rashmi has published in journals like Childhood Education and Young Children. She can be reached at rashmik@dolphin.upenn.edu.
Katherine Schultz (Faculty Advisor) is an Associate Professor of Education and director of the new Center for Collaborative Research and Practice in Teacher Education. Her research focuses on the preparation and on-going support of new teachers in urban public schools. In addition her research addresses adolescent literacy practices, pathways into teaching, and international teacher education. Her recent book, Listening: A Framework for Teaching Across Differences suggests that teachers build their pedagogy and practice by listening closely to students. She traveled to Banda Aceh, Indonesia in the summers of 2005 and 2006 to work with mentor teachers as a part of Penn’s response to the tsunami.
Diana T. Slaughter-Defoe (Interim Faculty Advisor) is the Constance E. Clayton Professor in Urban Education at the University of Pennsylvania, Graduate School of Education. Her research interests include culture, primary education, and home-school relations that facilitate in-school academic achievement. She and partners are currently implementing two child intervention projects: (a) Go-Girls, an NSF-funded dissemination project with middle-school age girls; and (b) Summer Freedom School, a Children’s Defense Fund literacy program reaching100 K–5th grade children in West Philadelphia.
Review
Board
The review board reads and assesses all submissions and makes recommendations to authors for revisions.
Review Board Members include:Heather Curl
Alyshia Brooks-Bowden
Rachel Fester
Sarah Hobson
Shani Evans
Chris Soto
Shivani Thammineni
Kate Theriault
Mary Kay Rhude Faust
Tamara Warhol
Maria Christina Limingan
Dorothea Laskey
Montserrat Roda Bencells
Enakshi Bose
Jaime Bard
Joy Anderson
Cynthia Groff
Esther Kim
Page Fahrig
Monica Rawley
Valerie Adams
Rena Harris
Rachel Throop
Clarisse Mesa
Allison Luhrs
Jessica Kim
Anne Marie Garth
Rashmi Kumar