|
 | |
Diana T. Slaughter-Defoe
Constance E. Clayton Professor in Urban Education
|
Education
1962: B.A., with honors, Committee on Human Development,
University of Chicago
1964: M.A., Committee on Human Development, University of
Chicago
1968: Ph.D., Committee on Human Development, University of
Chicago, with emphasis on Developmental and Clinical Child Psychology
Areas of Expertise
Urban education
Primary education
Child development
Home/school partnerships
Professional Biography
Before joining the standing faculty at Penn GSE in 1998 as
Clayton Professor in Urban Education, Dr. Slaughter-Defoe taught for 20 years
at Northwestern University’s School of Education. Prior to going to
Northwestern in 1977, she had served on the faculties of the department of
psychiatry at Howard University in Washington, D.C. (1967–68), the Child Study
Center at Yale University (1968–70), and the Committee on Human Development and
department of education at the University of Chicago (1970–77). At
Northwestern, she was a member of the Institute for Policy Research Studies and
the department of African American studies. Her dissertation research, for
which she received the distinguished research award from Pi Lambda Theta, was
conducted with a Chicago-area Head Start population of mothers and children.
Much later, in 1994, she was cited by the American Psychological Association
for Distinguished Contributions to Research in Public Policy. She has completed
government-funded research in the area of middle school-aged children and
families’ experiences in diverse urban private school settings. Her
publications include an edited volume on this topic (Greenwood Press, 1988)
that is a “classic first.” Dr. Slaughter-Defoe is currently a member of the
Board of Visitors of the Learning, Research and Development Center (LRDC) of
the University of Pittsburgh and has been a member of the Governing Council of
the Society for Research in Child Development. Formerly a member of the
editorial boards of Child Development (associate editor), Applied Developmental
Psychology, and Educational Researcher,
she is currently a member of Human
Development and NHSA Dialog: A Research-To-Practice Journal for the Early
Intervention Field. In June 2007, the University of Chicago awarded her its
Lifetime Professional Achievement Citation.
Research Interests and Current Projects
Dr. Slaughter-Defoe’s research interests include culture,
primary education, and home-school relations that facilitate in-school academic
achievement. She concluded a collaborative research evaluation of the Comer
School Development Program, a parent-focused school reform model implemented in
several lower-income Chicago schools. Papers were presented at the
International Conference on the Study of Behavioral Development in Beijing,
China (summer 2000) and at the 2001 Biennial meeting of the Society for
Research in Child Development. New ethnographic research in Philadelphia
focusing on the study of the learning environments in the primary grades of two
Philadelphia elementary schools that are successfully serving 40 percent or
more lower-income and African-American children began in the fall of 2001. She
and partners are currently implementing two child intervention projects: (a)
Go-Girls, an NSF-funded dissemination project with middle-school age girls; and
(b) Summer Freedom School, a Children’s Defense Fund literacy program
reaching100 K–5th grade children in West Philadelphia.
Courses Taught
EDUC 560: Human Development
EDUC 604: Foundations of Urban Education
EDUC 615: Parenting and Children’s Educational Development
EDUC 614: Child Development and Social Policy
EDUC 545: Policy Issues in Early Childhood Development
Selected Publications
Slaughter-Defoe, D., Garrett, A.,& Harrison-Hale, A.
(Eds.). (2006). Our children too:
A history of the Black Caucus of the Society for Research in
Child Development, 1973-1997.
Monographs of the Society for Research in Child Development,
Serial No. 283, 71 (1).
Slaughter-Defoe, D. (2002). Toward the future school
schooling of girls: Global status, issues, and prospects. Human Development,
45, 34–53.
|
