Dr.
Diana Slaughter-Defoe
Constance E. Clayton Professor in Urban Education
Dr. Diana Slaughter-Defoe
received a B.A. with honors In the Committee on Human Development at
the University of Chicago, and an M.A. In the Committee on Human Development,
University of Chicago. Her Ph.D. was awarded In the Committee on Human
Development, University of Chicago, with emphasis on Developmental and
Clinical Child Psychology.
Dr. Slaughter-Defoe joined the standing faculty in 1998 as Clayton Professor
at the Graduate School of Education at the University of Pennsylvania
after having taught for 20 years at Northwestern University. Prior to
going to the School of Education at Northwestern in 1977, she served
on the faculties of the Department of Psychiatry in Howard University
in Washington, DC (1967-8); the Child Study Center at Yale University
(1968-1970); and the Committee on Human development and Department of
Education at the University of Chicago (1970-7). At Northwestern, she
was also a member of the Institute for Policy research, Studies and
the Department of African American Studies. Her dissertation research,
for which she received the distinguished research award from Pi Lambda
Theta, was conducted with a Chicago-area Head Start population of mothers
and children.
In 1994, she was cited by the American Psychological Association for
Distinguished Contributions to Research in Public Policy. She has completed
government-funded research in the area of middle school-aged children
and families' experiences in diverse urban private school settings.
Her publications include an edited volume on this topic: (Greenwood
Press, 1988), that is a "classic first". Dr. Slaughter-Defoe
is presently a member of the Board of Visitors of the Learning, Research
and Development Center (LRDC) of the University of Pittsburgh, and has
been a member of the Governing Council of the Society for Research in
Child Development. She is on the editorial boards of Applied Developmental
Psychology and NHSA Dialog: A Research-To-Practice Journal for the Early
Intervention Field.
Dr. Slaughter-Defoe's research interests include culture, primary education, and home-school relations that facilitate in-school academic achievement. She just concluded a collaborative research evaluation of the Comer School development Program, a parent-focused school reform model implemented in several lower income Chicago schools. New ethnographic research in Philadelphia focusing on study of the learning environments in the primary grades of two Philadelphia elementary schools that are successfully serving 40 percent or more lower income and African American children began in fall, 2001.