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Ph.D., New York University, (2008)M.P.P., Harvard University, (1999)B.A., Cornell University, (1996)
Ebony Bridwell-Mitchell is the Herbert A. Simon Professor of Education, Management and Organizational Behavior at the Harvard University Graduate School of Education. She studies how institutional and organizational conditions enable and inhibit the implementation of U.S. K-12 education reform policies. Her research, employing both qualitative and quantitative methods, such as social network analysis, has been published in high-impact peer-reviewed journals across fields, translated for practice-oriented outlets, supported by funders, such as the National Science Foundation, and awarded by professional associations. Ultimately, Bridwell-Mitchell’s research program aims to provide researchers, policymakers, and practitioners with theoretically grounded and empirically rigorous conceptual frameworks, analytical tools, and research evidence needed to improve schools and extend educational opportunities, especially for underserved students. The values driving her work were instilled by parents with long careers in education and human services and a family with rural roots prizing integrity, hard work, and fair play. Bridwell-Mitchell’s early experiences in Montessori education taught her to value self-directed, interdisciplinary learning, and problem solving as much for the sake of personal fulfillment as individual attainment. She brings these values not only to her work as a researcher and teacher in academia but also when partnering with leading-edge education organizations to support organizational development, institutional change, and school reform across the country.
Since the first state takeover of local public schools in 1989, state intervention has expanded to also include school turnaround, a designation for rapid improvement for schools with persistent low performance. Prior research suggests the conceptual use of research evidence may help leaders better understand what challenges lead to longstanding, taken-for-granted, but ineffective practices in turnaround schools. The use of research epistemology, or the ‘how to’ methods behind research evidence, may help leaders better understand the process for developing meaningful solutions in their own contexts. Leveraging organizational research on field configuring events, Bridwell-Mitchell and team will examine whether an intentionally designed professional convening and consultancy intervention can catalyze conditions to improve turnaround leaders’ conceptual use of research evidence and epistemology. The multi-stage, multi-method pilot study will examine the experiences and turnaround practices of convening participants; it will also examine their use of research evidence and epistemology, making comparisons to similar leaders not attending the convening. Findings will provide evidence for the viability of an at-scale intervention to create a model for state education agencies and others to convene turnaround leaders as a lever for turnaround progress.
Professor Ebony Bridwell-Mitchell shares how leveraging social networks can spark meaningful change, and why schools must embrace the power of human connection to achieve lasting success