Professional Biography
Dr. Johanek is a Senior Fellow in the Education, Culture, and Society program in the Policy, Organizations, Leadership, and Systems Division at Penn GSE, where he was Director of the Mid-Career Doctoral Program in Educational Leadership from 2007 to 2024. He currently directs the Inter-American Educational Leadership Network (RILE), the Educational Leadership Simulations Program (ELS), and The Judgment Project. He is an affiliated faculty member of Perry World House and the Center for Latin American and Latinx Studies at Penn Arts and Sciences. He teaches as Profesor Invitado Internacional at La Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile and Profesor Invitado of the educational leadership programs at La Universidad de Los Andes, Colombia.
Before coming to Penn in the spring of 2007, he served as Vice President of Professional Services for Teachscape, a for-profit blended technology services company, where he managed all service engagements nationally. He is the former Executive Director for K–12 Professional Development, The College Board, where he managed programs supporting over 500,000 middle and high school teachers, college faculty, coordinators, and administrators, including those involved in the Advanced Placement Program. He founded, developed, and managed a program development and operations department with responsibilities including new product development, in-person training, web services, electronic and print publications, regional office operational support, marketing, and research. A former high school teacher in Cleveland, New York, and Lima, Peru, he taught in and managed the Fellows in Teaching Program and Urban Fellow Program at Teachers College, Columbia University prior to joining the College Board.
Dr. Johanek recently served on the board of The Loyola School (NYC), and on the Advisory Group for the Inter-American Teacher Education Network (AGITEN), Organization of American States; he previously served on the Advisory Council of the Penn Center for Educational Leadership and on the board of Research for Action, a non-profit organization engaged in education research and evaluation. Prior to serving as a reviewer for the U.S. Department of Education in the 2010 and 2012 Race to the Top competitions, he served on the department’s Working Group for Postsecondary Linkage Efforts to Improve College Readiness and on the independent Annenberg Commission on Public Schools for their Institutions of Democracy Project. He served as co-PI and advisor in several National Science Foundation-funded professional development research projects, on the National Education Advisory Board for the French & Indian War 250th Anniversary Commemoration, and on the Organization of American Historians-Advanced Placement Joint Advisory Board on Teaching the U.S. History Survey. He served on the Alumni Council at Teachers College, Columbia University, and on the Board of Trustees of The Concord Review. He has recently served as a peer reviewer for AERA, UCEA, Educational Researcher, Theory and Research in Education, Journal of School Leadership, the History of Education Society, and the Fondo de Investigaciones Educativas (PREAL). He co-founded SchoolSims, LLC, and founded Sapience, LLC, serving on the boards of both. He has taught at New York University’s Steinhardt School of Education and consulted for school districts and ministries.
Research Interests and Current Projects
Current interests include the nature of situated judgment in leadership development across professions; the history of recent urban educational reforms, especially as instruments of civic engagement and development; community-centered and place-based approaches to education; and the role of global professional infrastructure in educational leadership.
Dr. Johanek co-authored Making up Our Mind: What School Choice Is Really About with Sigal Ben-Porath (University of Chicago Press, 2019), which provides philosophical and historical perspectives on school choice in the U.S. He recently completed a volume of practitioner research, with co-editors Susan Lytle, “Torch” Lytle, and Kathy Rho, entitled Repositioning Educational Leadership: Practitioners Leading from an Inquiry Stance (Teachers College Press, 2018) that focuses on educational leadership.
With Spencer Foundation support, Dr. Johanek is examining recent educational reform by investigating the history of a Chicago neighborhood organization serving Mexican-American communities and associated with an extensive charter school network. In addition, he recently served on a research and development team with Catholic University colleagues in Chile for the project, "Prototipo y validación de una plataforma virtual de competencias directivas de liderazgo instruccional para contextos escolares basado en métodos de análisis de desempeño directivo," and was awarded a Fulbright grant to support his work there.
Dr. Johanek co-teaches a MOOC, “American Education Reform: History, Policy and Practice,” with John Puckett, focused on the utility of history in understanding current school reform.
Selected Publications
