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Biography
John Puckett taught courses and seminars in American education reform, history, policy, and practice; education and the American city; and the philosophy of John Dewey. Throughout his nearly four decades at Penn GSE, he was known for connecting scholarship and community. His teaching and collaborative research helped advance the development of university-assisted community schools and academically based community service, linking classroom learning with civic engagement and neighborhood partnerships.
At Penn, Dr. Puckett played a formative role in shaping university–community partnerships that continue to define Penn's civic mission today. Working with Ira Harkavy from 1988 to 1992, he helped establish the University's Center for Community Partnerships—now the Netter Center for Community Partnerships—and spent his career advancing its vision of democratic engagement and education for citizenship. In collaboration with the Netter Center and Penn's Urban Studies Program, he developed and taught academically based community service seminars that brought Penn students into meaningful work with West Philadelphia schools.
Dr. Puckett's background includes six years of teaching and administrative work in public and private secondary schools in North Carolina, Georgia, and Florida. He earned his Ph.D. in education from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Before joining Penn GSE in 1987, he served as director of research and development for REAL Enterprises, a nonprofit that supported school-based economic development projects across the rural South.
Within Penn GSE, he also took on key leadership roles, including associate dean (1998–2004; 2006–07) and chair of both the Educational Leadership and Education Policy divisions.
Research Interests and Current Projects
Dr. Puckett's research and writing explore the intersections of education, democracy, and community life. One of his final projects at Penn GSE was the creation the West Philadelphia Collaborative History project. He authored Foxfire Reconsidered: A Twenty-Year Experiment in Progressive Education (University of Illinois Press, 1989); Leonard Covello and the Making of Benjamin Franklin High School: Education as If Citizenship Mattered (Temple University Press, 2007), with Michael C. Johanek; Dewey's Dream: Universities and Democracies in an Age of Education Reform (Temple University Press, 2007), with Lee Benson and Ira Harkavy; and Becoming Penn: The Pragmatic American University, 1950–2000 (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2015).
Dr. Puckett held leadership roles in the West Philadelphia Community History Center and Penn GSE's Independent School Teaching Residency program, and he was a frequent Bodek Lecturer for the University. He also served on numerous university, community, public school, and citywide advisory boards and task forces and is a Distinguished Fellow of the Netter Center for Community Partnerships. Among his many initiatives, he helped organize a successful five-year community organizing effort to build a new high school in West Philadelphia.
Earlier in his career, Dr. Puckett was awarded a Spencer Foundation/National Academy of Education Postdoctoral Fellowship for his study on the history of the community school concept from 1886 to the present (1991–92). In 1996–97, he was a Fulbright Scholar in Germany, where he lectured in American Studies at the Otto-von-Guericke-Universität in Magdeburg. His MOOC, American Education Reform, co-taught with Penn GSE's Michael C. Johanek, continues to appear annually on Coursera’s online platform.
Publications
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