Candice Bocala

Candice Bocala is a lecturer on education at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. Her research focuses on the connections between educator learning and organizational conditions that support collaborative work, and she studies how schools and districts use data and continuous improvement to build equitable schools. She is the research director of the Data Wise Project at HGSE, she co-chairs multiple Data Wise Institutes, and she is the co-author of Data Wise: Educators Collaborating So Each Learner Thrives (Harvard Education Press, 2025). Additionally, she is the co-author of The Internal Coherence Framework: Supporting the Conditions for Continuous Improvement in Schools (Harvard Education Press, 2017), which introduces a set of clinical tools for school educators to coherently align resources and professional learning with their instructional vision.  

Bocala began her career as an elementary school teacher in Washington, D.C. She was also a senior research associate at WestEd, where she served as a researcher, technical assistance provider, and data coach. As a program evaluator, she has led numerous formative and developmental evaluation projects that used a collaborative, participatory approach. 

Bocala received her Ed.D. from the Harvard Graduate School of Education, and she holds an M.A.T. in elementary education from American University, an M.A. in policy analysis and evaluation from Stanford University, and a B.A. in government from Cornell University.