John Lawrence Puckett Associate Professor & Chair, Policy, Management, and Evaluation Division johnp@gse.upenn.edu

Education
1970: B.A., German, Davidson College
1980: M.A., Education, University of Georgia, Athens
1986: Ph.D., Education, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill

Areas of Expertise
Civic education and community schooling
University-community relations
The American high school
Education history

Professional Biography
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 holds a Ph.D. in education from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Before coming to Penn in 1987, Dr. Puckett was director of research and development for REAL Enterprises, a non-profit organization that helped catalyze school-based economic development projects nationwide. He served as associate dean of the Graduate School of Education from 1998 to 2004 and again in the 2006-07 academic year. Since coming to Penn, he has been actively involved in building University partnerships with West Philadelphia schools; from 1987 to 1991, he worked with Ira Harkavy to develop the University of Pennsylvania’s Center for Community Partnerships (CCP). More recently, he has taught in-service courses related to CCP projects in West Philadelphia. He has also co-authored a number of journal articles and book chapters with Penn Arts and Sciences faculty affiliated with CCP, advancing the development of university-assisted community schools and academically-based community service.

Research Interests and Current Projects
Dr. Puckett is the author of Foxfire Reconsidered: A Twenty-Year Experiment in Progressive Education (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1989), co-author of Leonard Covello and the Making of Benjamin Franklin High School: Education As If Citizenship Mattered (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2007), and co-author of Dewey’s Dream: Universities and Democracies in an Age of Education Reform (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2007). He is currently co-authoring a book on the history of the University of Pennsylvania since World War II, giving particular attention to Penn’s relationship with West Philadelphia. He serves on various university, community, public school, and citywide advisory boards and task forces. In 1991–92, Dr. Puckett was designated a Spencer Foundation/National Academy of Education postdoctoral fellow; his study centered on the history of the community school idea from 1886 to the present. In 1996–97, he was designated a Fulbright Scholar to Germany, where he lectured in American Studies at the Otto-von-Guericke-Universität in Magdeburg. 

Courses Taught
HIS 204: Teaching American History: A West Philadelphia Workshop
EDUC 244: Education and American Culture
EDUC 245/URBS: Penn and West Philadelphia, 1945 to 2006
EDUC 544: School and Society in America
EDUC 545: Volunteerism and Community Schools
EDUC 548: American Education Reform
EDUC 632: John Dewey: A Seminar
EDUC 623: Curriculum Development: Theory into Practice
EDUC 638: The American High School
EDUC 659: History of Twentieth Century American Education Reform
EDUC 808: Case Studies in Education
EDUC 808: American Curriculum in the Twentieth Century
EDUC 808: The Modern Research University: Penn as a Case Study
EDUC 820: Theory and Practice of Teaching and Learning
EDUC 999: Independent Study

Selected Publications
Bensen, L., Harkavy, I., & Puckett, J. (2007). Dewey’s Dream: Universities and Democracies in an Age of Education Reform. Philadelphia: Temple University Press.

Johanek, M., & Puckett. J. (2007). Leonard Covello and the Making of Benjamin Franklin High School – Education as If Citizenship Mattered. Philadelphia: Temple University Press.

Johanek, M., & Puckett. J. (2005). The state of civic education: Preparing citizens in an era of accountability. In M. Lazerson & S. Fuhrman (Eds.), The public schools. The Institutions of American Democracy series. New York: Oxford University Press.

Benson, L., Harkavy, I., & Puckett, J. (2000). An implementation revolution as a strategy for fulfilling the democratic promise of university-community partnerships: Penn-West Philadelphia as an experiment in progress. Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Quarterly, 29(1), 24–45.

Puckett, J., & Harkavy, I. (1999). The action research tradition in American social science: Toward a strategy for revitalizing the social sciences, the university and the American city. In D. Greenwood (Ed.), Action, research: From practice to writing in an international action research development program, 147-167. Philadelphia: John Benjamins.

Harkavy, I., & Puckett, J. (1994). Lessons from Hull House for the contemporary urban university. Social Services Review, 68(3), 299–321.