Extraordinary Faculty

At HGSE, you will learn from world-renowned researchers and practitioners. Our faculty members are inspiring teachers, approachable colleagues eager for your input and collaboration in research, and mentors who will challenge you to live up to your potential. Every year, a diverse group of over 100 faculty members guide more than 900 students in doctoral and master's programs at HGSE.

Working at the nexus of practice, policy, and research, HGSE faculty:

• Publish refereed journal articles and books that influence the national conversation about the most pressing issues in education
• Work extensively with practitioners in schools and in learning organizations worldwide to inform their research
• Collaborate with colleagues across Harvard University on large-scale district improvement projects
• Advise legislators and policymakers at the highest levels of policymaking.

Here are a few examples of faculty and their research:

Professor Hiro Yoshikawa is a developmental and community psychologist whose work examines how public policies, parental employment, and transnational contexts influence very young children's development in Chinese, Mexican, Dominican, and African American families. In addition to teaching and mentoring students at HGSE, he regularly advises governmental agencies, foundations, and educational and nongovernmental organizations in the United States and abroad. He is currently conducting a project on the development of young children and adolescents in Nanjing,China. He is also working on projects to improve the quality of preschool education in Boston and in Santiago,Chile.

Professor Nonie Lesaux, a recent recipient of the Presidential Early Career Awards for Scientists and Engineers, the highest honor given by the United States government to young professionals beginning their independent research careers, leads a research program that focuses on reading development of children from linguistically diverse backgrounds. Her previous research includes a study investigating language-minority learners' reading development from kindergarten through fourth grade, and an interdisciplinary study that examines the interaction among kindergartners' health and well-being, social competence, socioeconomic status, and language and cognitive processing skills known to be critical for reading development. She is currently working on evaluating the effects of academic language instruction in urban middle school classrooms with large numbers of struggling readers.

Professor Sara Lawrence-Lightfoot, is a sociologist who examines the culture of schools, the patterns and structures of classroom life, socialization within families and communities, and the relationships between culture and learning styles. She has pioneered portraiture, an approach to social science methodology that bridges the realms of aesthetics and empiricism. In 1984, Lawrence-Lightfoot was awarded the prestigious MacArthur prize fellowship, and in 1993, she was awarded Harvard's George Ledlie prize for research that makes the "most valuable contribution to science" and "the benefit of mankind." In March 1998, she was the recipient of the Emily Hargroves Fisher endowed chair at Harvard University, which, upon her retirement, will become the Sara Lawrence-Lightfoot endowed chair, making her the first African-American woman in Harvard's history to have an endowed professorship named in her honor.

Professor Howard Gardner has influenced educators' approach to teaching and learning in profound ways through his work, most notably with his theory of multiple intelligences, a critique of the notion that there exists but a single human intelligence that can be assessed by standard psychometric instruments. During the past two decades, he and colleagues at Project Zero have been working on the design of performance-based assessments; education for understanding; the use of multiple intelligences to achieve more personalized curriculum, instruction, and assessment; and the nature of interdisciplinary efforts in education. Gardner asserts in his book, Five Minds for the Future, that to prepare students for the future, educators need to cultivate both academic skills and character. Gardner describes five kinds of minds, or ways of thinking and acting: three are related to intellect: the disciplined, synthesizing and creative minds; two emphasize character: the respectful and ethical minds. In a recent lecture at HGSE, Gardner describes what it means for citizens and workers to exhibit these types of minds.