Penn GSE Grant News – Fall 2007

The University of Pennsylvania's Graduate School of Education (Penn GSE) has recently received research grants totaling almost $5M.

These grants will allow GSE faculty to continue research into instructional improvement, grow nanotechnology instruction in Philadelphia schools, study the implementation of ground-breaking research on Black men in college, and prepare U.S. teachers interested in Chinese language instruction.

Dr. Peg Goertz, a professor at Penn GSE and co-director of the Consortium for Policy Research in Education, has been awarded $2M from the William & Flora Hewlett Foundation for work in the Center on Continuous Instructional Improvement. The Center is testing the hypothesis that if teaching could be transformed so that it routinely exhibits the characteristics of "the cycle of instructional improvement" (a dynamic of assessment and adaptation), school effectiveness would meet the goals of standards-based reform to ensure that substantially all students achieve defined standards in core subjects.

Penn GSE will receive $1.3M from the National Science Foundation to fund the Nanotechnology and Bioengineering in Philadelphia Public Schools program. Led by GSE Assistant Professor Susan Yoon, faculty from Penn GSE and the School of Engineering and Applied Science (SEAS) will provide training and support to participating Philadelphia teachers. The project aims to improve student performance in science and to increase student awareness of science-related career and education possibilities. GSE and SEAS faculty hope to be able to take the project to scale across the district in the future.

A $650,000 grant from Lumina Foundation for Education will enable GSE to study the institutional implementation of findings from Assistant Professor Shaun Harper's National Black Male College Achievement Study, the largest known empirical investigation of black male college students. The grant will fund distribution in February 2008 of the 40-page report of the study's data. The grant will also fund implementation of study recommendations at six campuses over a three-year period.

Professor Teresa Pica and Associate Professor Kathy Schultz will receive $400,000 from the Freeman Foundation for the Teacher Preparation for Chinese Language Instruction program. A collaboration between GSE and Penn's Center for East Asian Studies, the program will draw on Penn's strengths in Chinese language instruction, high-quality teacher education, and international programming. The program reflects an awareness of the growing need for and interest in Chinese language instruction, both for ESOL and native-English speakers.

CONTACT: Nancy Brokaw, 215-573-0591, nbrokaw@gse.upenn.edu