all Graduate School of Education stories

Four from Harvard win Presidential Early Career Awards in Science and Engineering

404132862 — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 14:02:46 -0400

Four Harvard researchers have been named among the winners nationwide of this year’s Presidential Early Career Awards for Scientists and Engineers (PECASE). They are Roland G. Fryer Jr., Patrick J. Wolfe, Robert J. Wood, and Nonie K. Lesaux.

The announcement came today from the White House.

First Suzanne Murray Professor named

50443248 — Tue, 05 May 2009 12:37:42 -0400

The Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study has named Nancy E. Hill, a leader in the study of cultural influences on parenting and adolescent achievement, the first Suzanne Murray Professor. Hill has also been appointed a professor of education at the Harvard Graduate School of Education (HGSE), where she has served as a visiting associate professor. Both appointments are effective July 1, 2009.

The Murray professorship allows a newly tenured Harvard faculty member to spend four semesters as a Radcliffe Fellow during her or his first five years at Harvard. In addition, Hill’s research ideally positions her to collaborate with Radcliffe faculty leaders on the institute’s new policy studies initiatives as well as other academic activities.

NIH awards Harvard Medical School $117.5 million, five-year grant for patient-centered research

404132862 — Thu, 29 May 2008 12:42:32 -0400

The National Institutes of Health today announced that Harvard Medical School (HMS) will receive $117.5 million over the next five years for the establishment of a Clinical and Translational Science Center (CTSC) that will transform patient-oriented, laboratory-to-bedside research at HMS and its affiliated hospitals.

Early childhood stress affects developing brain

404132862 — Fri, 15 Feb 2008 18:54:27 -0500

It is now clear that creating a sustained, reliable, compassionate and widespread system that cares for tiny children born into troubled families is needed in this nation, said Jack P. Shonkoff, Director of the Center on the Developing Child at Harvard University.

Speaking today during a symposium at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, Shonkoff declared "there are no magic bullets" that will rid America of a continuing legacy of illness, mental health problems, crime and low achievement spawned by neglect of very young children.

From neuroscience to childhood policy

404132862 — Fri, 07 Dec 2007 14:40:01 -0500

The Center on the Developing Child, founded in July 2006 to promote healthy child development as “the foundation of community development, economic prosperity, and a secure nation,” has been putting its message forth in a powerful series of colloquia across the University.

Advances in genetics can help kids learn

50443248 — Tue, 02 Oct 2007 15:34:19 -0400

Education was becoming a no-brainer, some people at Harvard’s Graduate School of Education (HGSE) complained.

Kurt Fischer and his colleagues looked at the revolution in brain scanning, genetics, and other biological technologies and decided that most teachers and students weren’t getting much benefit from them. Brain scans are now available to watch what’s going on when someone is learning — or not learning. Finding genes that are involved in leaning disabilities is a hot area. Why, they asked, aren’t the powers of such technologies helping teachers in classrooms?

Howard Gardner's 'quintet of minds'

50443248 — Tue, 02 Oct 2007 11:54:47 -0400

It’s been more than 20 years since Harvard psychologist Howard Gardner offered up a radical idea: that humans possess multiple forms of intelligence rather than just a single type that is easily tested by linguistic and logical-mathematical parameters.

His groundbreaking “Frames of Mind” (1983) changed traditional psychological views of intelligence, and helped educators question conventional teaching and testing.

In a new book this year, Gardner — the John H. and Elisabeth A. Hobbs Professor of Cognition and Education at the Harvard Graduate School of Education (HGSE) — goes beyond describing cognition. He ventures into prescription.

Noyce Scholarships provide incentive for public school internships

50443248 — Tue, 02 Oct 2007 12:06:26 -0400

Among the topics in the national conversation on education during the past few years have been teacher retention (particularly for high-needs schools) and the lack of math and science educators in primary and secondary settings. The National Science Foundation’s Robert Noyce Scholarship — which was awarded this year to 10 master’s students from the Harvard Graduate School of Education (HGSE) — aims to solve these difficult problems. This year’s winners are Muhammad Al-Ahmar, Michelle Cooper, Samuel Garson, Elizabeth (Liza) Hansel, Katie Heim, Sean Kussner, Anne Lutz, Mike Nduaguba, Shelley Olsen, and Stacy Williams.

Medieval Islamic architecture presages 20th century mathematics

50443248 — Wed, 03 Oct 2007 09:30:06 -0400

Intricate decorative tilework found in medieval architecture across the Islamic world appears to exhibit advanced decagonal quasicrystal geometry - a concept discovered by Western mathematicians and physicists only in the 1970s and 1980s. If so, medieval Islamic application of this geometry would predate Western mastery by at least half a millennium.

The finding, by Peter J. Lu at Harvard University and Paul J. Steinhardt at Princeton University, will be published this week in the journal Science.

Young scholars show findings at HGSE Student Research Conference

50443248 — Wed, 03 Oct 2007 09:47:08 -0400

In a basement classroom in Larsen Hall on Friday (Feb. 23), there was everything young learners need: chalkboards, a screen, bright lights, sturdy chairs - and good teachers. In this case, four good teachers - all of them Ed.M. students at the Harvard Graduate School of Education (HGSE).

The four were among 230 young scholars from universities across North America at HGSE's daylong Student Research Conference. The annual event - in its 12th year, and the only one of its kind in the country - provides a way for first-time education researchers to mingle with their peers, practice presentation skills, and get a sense of emerging scholarship.

'Usable Knowledge' Web site delivers research to educators

70652986 — Mon, 26 Mar 2007 06:28:29 -0400

The Harvard Graduate School of Education on Dec. 6, 2006, launched a new Web site aimed at connecting the research of its faculty with educators in the field. The Usable Knowledge Web site features a diverse set of media - text, video, and audio - to make the leading research of its faculty accessible to educators all over the world.

The Usable Knowledge Web site is organized around five topic areas that align with high priorities for educators: leadership and policy; learning and development; decisions through data; community and family; and teaching and curriculum.

Born to add

70652986 — Mon, 26 Mar 2007 06:21:54 -0400

In experiments, 5-year-olds, who had no real experience using number symbols, "added" two arrays of dots and compared them to a third array.

Is testing rational?

50443248 — Wed, 25 Jul 2007 13:32:22 -0400

How can scientific research better inform education policy?
That question is at the core of the three-part Burton and Ingles Lecture Series at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, which has made the translation of solid educational research into educational practice one of its priorities under Dean Ellen Lagemann. Michael Feuer, a leading educational research and policy analyst, continued to probe "The Science of Rationality and the Rationality of Science" in the second of his three lectures on Feb. 24.

Race, class still matter

70652986 — Mon, 26 Mar 2007 05:36:58 -0400

Even as she was marching proudly through academia, earning a Ph.D. in sociology from Yale and a fellowship and ultimately assistant professorship at Harvard, Vivian Shuh Ming Louie saw family members and friends from her former Chinatown neighborhood struggling to stay in, or get into, college. Turning a scholarly lens on this experience, Louie produced "Compelled to Excel: Immigration, Education, and Opportunity Among Chinese Americans" (Stanford University Press, 2004). "The model minority thesis is used to make the argument that race doesn't matter, that class doesn't matter, because look at all these Asian Americans. Look how well they're doing," says Louie. "But in fact, I find that class matters and race matters as well." For "Compelled to Excel," which grew out of Louie's dissertation, she conducted qualitative research on Chinese American students in two distinct higher education environments in her native New York: Hunter College, a commuter college that is part of the City University of New York, and the Ivy League Columbia University. In all, she interviewed 68 second-generation Chinese American college students and the parents and adult siblings of eight students to learn how their socioeconomic class and, surprisingly to her, race affected their educational opportunities.

China's one-child policy comes of age

70652986 — Mon, 26 Mar 2007 05:35:19 -0400

When the Chinese government dictated that families limit themselves to one child each, it was a huge change: Chinese women averaged six births a piece in 1970, and parents traditionally relied on a large number of offspring to provide an economic security blanket. The purpose of the initiative, says Harvard Graduate School of Education Assistant Professor Vanessa Fong, was to help the country leapfrog from a Third-World economy into the First-World economy by mimicking First-World fertility and education patterns.