Sharon M. Ravitch Senior Lecturer Faculty Fellow and Interim Director, Center for Collaborative Research and Practice in Teacher Education    ravitch@gse.upenn.edu

1993: B.A. Religion, Women’s Studies, Temple University
1994: Ed.M., Risk and Prevention, Harvard University
1995: Ed.M., Human Development and Psychology, Harvard University
2000: Ph.D., Education, Culture, and Society, University of Pennsylvania

Professional Biography

Dr. Ravitch’s research in the areas of research methodology, practice-based inquiry, and multicultural teacher and counselor education began with developing a conceptual framework for the integration of interpretive philosophies, specifically hermeneutics and phenomenology, into applied development work, with a focus on theory-research-practice connections in teaching and counseling (Nakkula & Ravitch, 1998). This work was an outgrowth of her work as a middle school counselor in the Boston and Cambridge Public Schools. Dr. Ravitch helped to develop Project IF: Inventing the Future, an urban school-based counseling program that is a collaboration among Harvard University, Massachusetts General Hospital, and the Boston Public School System. Her work in the area of urban school counseling and intervention led Dr. Ravitch to the exploration of a broader examination and critique of systemic issues within the American educational system.

She earned her doctorate at the University of Pennsylvania Graduate School of Education, where she was a Dean’s Fellow and a Cantor-Fitzgerald Fellow in the Education, Culture, and Society Program, earning an interdisciplinary doctorate that combined anthropology, sociology, and education to study issues of race, culture, identity, and inequity in schools and society. Dr. Ravitch’s doctoral work focused on multicultural teacher education with a specific interest in how teachers bring their autobiographies to their learning about teaching, particularly in relation to issues of social location and educational inequity as well in understanding and developing the conditions necessary for the facilitation of constructively critical multicultural teacher learning in teacher education courses. She continues to explore these issues within her teaching and research in the area of multicultural teacher education.

Dr. Ravitch was an assistant professor at Arcadia University, where she taught doctoral-level courses on action research, practitioner research, and research design as well as master’s-level courses focused on multicultural teacher education. Dr. Ravitch’s research in the areas of institutional ethnography and practice-based inquiry is grounded in her experiences working with a range of educational practitioners and business professionals across these various domains and content areas. Her work integrates across the fields of qualitative research, education, sociology, cultural anthropology, and human development.

Research Interests and Current Projects

Dr. Ravitch’s research has four main strands: (1) Practitioner research: Dr. Ravitch’s research in the area of practice-based inquiry centers on practice-based research that works from an applied ethnographic approach to engendering professional and institutional development and change. Her research focuses on the influences of practice-based inquiry on school-based practice and educational leadership more broadly. Dr. Ravitch is particularly interested in how practitioners learn about inquiry and how they conceptualize and utilize research in relation to their daily practices, commitments, and goals. Dr. Ravitch is engaged in the teaching of and collaborative research with educational and business leaders across the United States as well as with systemic family therapists at the Central Integral de la Familia and the Universidad Cristiana Latino Americana in Quito, Ecuador. (2) Teacher education: Dr. Ravitch is engaged in research that focuses on teacher education and professional development, specifically the ways in which issues of diversity, inequity, and the sociopolitical context of schooling shape urban teachers’ perspectives on a diverse range of students, their own worldviews, and their pedagogy as well as the teaching and learning that take place in and around teaching and teacher education courses. She is engaged in collaborative research focused on the role of reflective writing and inquiry groups on teachers’ processes of learning to teach. (3) Ethnography within and across fields: Dr. Ravitch is engaged in collaborative research on issues of methodology, representation, and media influence on the practices, conceptions, articulations, and uses of ethnography within and across disciplines; and (4) international social justice research that works from a participatory action research approach. Dr. Ravitch is co-leading a multi-year participatory action research initiative that seeks to understand marginalized populations’ access to justice in four conflict-impacted countries: Afghanistan, Burundi, Colombia, and Liberia.

Dr. Ravitch is the Research Co-Director at the Center for the Study of Boys’ and Girls’ Lives. She is the principal investigator in several multi-year evaluations that focus on professional and organizational development in educational and community-based contexts.

EDUC 545: Fieldwork and Mentoring
EDUC 579: Intercultural Communication and Miscommunication
EDUC 621: Doctoral Proseminar in Professional Education
EDUC 665: Research on Teaching
EDUC 668: Master’s Research Seminar
EDUC 672: Introduction to Ethnography and Qualitative Research Methods
EDUC 699: Teach for America: Race and Cultural Issues in Urban Education
EDUC 801: Mid-Career Doctorate in Educational Leadership Program: Qualitative Research Methods
EDUC 802: Mid-Career Doctorate in Educational Leadership Program: Research Proposal and Instrument Design
GSE/Wharton Executive Program in Workplace Learning and Performance Leadership: Qualitative Research Methods

Ravitch, S.M. and Nakkula, M.J. (in review). Teaching, Learning, and Doing: Interpretive Approaches to Educational Inquiry and Professional Development.

Ravitch, S.M. and Wirth, K. (2007). Collaborative development of a pedagogy of opportunity for urban students: Navigations and negotiations in insider action research. Journal of Action Research, 5(1): 75-91.

Ravitch, S.M. (2006). School Counseling Principles: Multiculturalism and Diversity. Arlington: American School Counselor Association Press.

Ravitch, S.M. (2005). Pluralism, power and politics: Discourses of diverse pedagogies and pedagogies of diversity. In J. Shultz, & N. Peters-Davis (Eds.), Challenges of Multicultural Education: Teaching and Taking Diversity Courses. Boulder: Paradigm.

Ravitch, S.M., Girard, B., & Roeser, R.R. (2005) Multicultural teacher reflections: Counternarratives to images of the white male blockhead. In J. Shultz, & N. Peters-Davis (Eds.), Challenges of Multicultural Education: Teaching and Taking Diversity Courses. Boulder: Paradigm.

Nakkula, M.J., & Ravitch, S.M. (1998). Matters of Interpretation: Reciprocal Transformation in Therapeutic and Developmental Relationships with Youth. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.