Diane Waff

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Director Emeritus of the Philadelphia Writing Project

Contact

dwaff@upenn.edu

(215) 898-8130

Education

Ed.D. (Reading, Writing, & Literacy) University of Pennsylvania, 2007
M.S. (Educational Administration) Saint Joseph’s University, 2001
M.Ed. (Special Education) Antioch University, 1980
B.A. (English Literature) University of Pennsylvania, 1976

Areas of Expertise

Literacy and learning
Practitioner inquiry
Professional development
Urban school reform

More Information

Philadelphia Writing Project

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Biography

Professional Biography

Dr. Waff, a literacy educator, specializes in working closely with secondary and community college teachers in all subject areas to establish professional learning communities and habits of reflective practice, leading to innovations in curriculum and instruction that increase students’ access to higher levels of literacy learning. Through curriculum and professional development initiatives, she facilitates positive change in school cultures, transforming schools into communities of learners, creating teaching and learning opportunities to empower administrators, teachers, and students to realize school reform goals.

Prior to joining the Penn faculty, Dr. Waff spent three years as a senior program associate at WestEd in Oakland, California. While there, she engaged teachers in specifically designed collaborative-learning experiences from which they gained the knowledge and instructional strategies they needed to support the literacy development of their diverse students. She has facilitated national Leadership Institutes in Reading Apprenticeships, mid-year conferences, regional professional development workshops, and webinars reaching hundreds of educators worldwide.

Dr. Waff has extensive experience as a high school teacher, district and building administrator, K-12 teaching and learning coordinator, and teacher researcher. For over two decades, she has worked with teacher research communities as a convener and facilitator for the National Writing Project, the BreadLoaf Teacher Network, and Seeking Educational Equity and Diversity. She serves on the board of the Practitioner Initiated Inquiry Series for Teachers College Press and served as chair of the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE) Secondary Section Steering Committee from 2006-2008.

Research Interests and Current Projects

Dr. Waff’s research interests focus on how literacy-focused professional development opportunities for content-area teachers relate to changes in teacher practice and student outcomes. From 2007-2010, she co-led a national teacher research project in which instructors from community colleges in California studied these issues. Dr. Waff became the Director of the Philadelphia Writing Project (PhilWP) in August 2010. PhilWP, a site of the National Writing Project, is a collaboration between the Graduate School of Education and teachers in Philadelphia public, private and parochial schools, exploring literacy, writing, teaching, and learning in schools and classrooms across disciplines and grades.

Publications

Selected Publications

Goswami, D., Lewis, C., Rutherford, M., & Waff, D. (2009). On teacher inquiry: Approaches to language and literacy. New York: Teachers College Press.

Waff, D. (2009). An insider voice: leading as a teacher. In M. Cochran-Smith and S. L. Lytle (eds.), Inquiry as stance: Practitioner research in the next generation. New York: Teachers College Press.

Lytle, S., Portnoy, P., Waff, D., & Buckley, M. (2009). Teacher research in urban Philadelphia: Twenty years working within, against, and beyond the system. Educational Action Research, 17, 23–42.

Waff, D. (2008) What teacher inquiry means in practice. The Council Chronicle. NCTE, 18, 32–34.

Chilla, N., Cole, H., & Waff, D. (2007). Leadership for literacy: Teachers raising expectations and opportunities. English Journal, 96, 12–14.

Alvermann, D., Hinchman, K., Moore, D., Phelps, S., & Waff, D. (2006). Reconceptualizing the literacies in adolescents’ lives (2nd edition). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.

Livesay, M., Moore, C., Stankay, R., Waters, M., Waff, D., & Gentile, C. (2005). Collaborative learning communities: Building leadership in a high school English department. English Journal, 95, 16–18.

Waff, D., & Connell, P. (2004). Trenton Central High School SSR: A case study. English Journal, 93, 13–15.

Gold, E., Rhodes, A., Brown, S., Lytle, S., & Waff, D. (2001). Clients, consumers, or collaborators? Parents and their roles in school reform during Children Achieving, 1995–2000. Philadelphia: Consortium for Policy Research in Education.

Alvermann, D., Hinchman, K., Moore, D., Phelps, S., & Waff, D. (1998). Reconceptualizing the literacies in adolescents’ lives. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.

News & Media

Penn GSE News

New faculty, staff appointments strengthen key Penn GSE centers

The Collaboratory for Teaching and Teacher Education, Ethnography in Education Research Forum, HEARD and PhilWP have all welcomed new leadership in recent months.

November 2, 2023

Celebration of Writing and Literacy seeks proposals on safe spaces for October conference

Organizers are seeking presentations of original curriculum, research, or pedagogy related to re-establishing school and classroom communities as authentic, positive, and nurturing spaces. Submissions are due Aug. 18.

August 9, 2023

Black Girls Literacies Project promotes self-care and community for Philadelphia teens

Doctoral student Barrett Rosser and the Philadelphia Writing Project are expanding the notion of literacy to help young Black women express self-love, build community and foster their identities.

March 8, 2023

Experts, educators gather to learn how to teach environmental justice

More than 130 local educators came together at a recent writing conference co-hosted by the Philadelphia Writing Project.

November 1, 2022

Teach-In will bring together Penn community in a defense of expertise in public debate

The Philadelphia Writing Project will host a screening of the documentary “American Creed” March 22.

March 19, 2018

Annual writing and literacy conference brings Philadelphia educators to Penn GSE

The Teacher Research and Knowledge: A Celebration of Writing and Literacy conference, co-sponsored by Penn GSE's PhilWP and the Teacher Education and Reading/Writing/Literacy programs, emphasized teacher knowledge in reading and literacy practices.

November 29, 2017

In the Media

Projects for Progress, two years in

Colleagues from Penn GSE and the Netter Center were honored for being selected in the first cohort of the new Projects for Progress award.

Penn Today | October 18, 2022

Inaugural Projects for Progress recipients announced

Caroline Watts, Diane Waff, Zachary Herrmann, Marsha Richardson, and Regina Bynum were selected to implement their initiative “Bridging Gaps and Building Capacity: Student and Educator Supports for School Reopening in Learning Network 2.” The initative will provide evidence-based programming and professional development at one to two summer learning sites in West Philadelphia, followed by network-wide professional learning supports throughout the 2021-22 academic year.

Penn Today | May 18, 2021

Awards & Honors

The Philadelphia Writing Project (PhilWP), directed by Diane Waff, has received a $50,000 grant from the Library of Congress for a 12-month project. The project, Using Primary Sources to Support Civically Engaged Argument Writing in K-12 Classrooms: A Philadelphia Story, will support teachers to refine and use curricular units in their classrooms, document student work, and co-produce webinars. It will also aim to expand the audience for this work and support 10 teachers to attend PhilWP's Invitational Summer institute in July 2022.

Posted on October 1, 2021

The Philadelphia Writing Project, directed by Diane Waff, has received a $50,000 grant from the DE County Workforce Development Board to design a financial literacy program for Delaware County Out-of-School Youth (ages 16-24). The project will track the impact of goal setting and financial literacy competencies through the development of a passion projects bank.

Posted on July 1, 2021

The Philadelphia Writing Project, directed by Dianne Waff, received $20,000 to fund a yearlong initiative “Supporting and Sustaining Teachers’ Writing, Learning, and Leading Through Teaching with Primary Sources,” designed to deepen and extend practitioners’ classroom inquiries using primary sources and to further develop their capacities as literacy leaders. The grant will support two summer institutes for teachers with school-year follow up.

Posted on July 15, 2020