Professional Biography
Dr. Nicole Mittenfelner Carl is the Director of the Urban Teaching Residency master’s program. Previously, Dr. Carl was the Special Projects Lead for the Collaboratory for Teacher Education at Penn GSE. In that role, she led the Collaboratory’s two priority initiatives focusing on (1) mentoring novice teachers and (2) researching and addressing issues of equity in teacher education. Dr. Carl is an experienced teacher educator and has been formally mentoring novice teachers in Philadelphia since 2008. Dr. Carl also developed and facilitated the mentoring curriculum for mentors of novice teachers in Penn GSE’s Independent School Teaching Residency master’s program.
Dr. Carl received her doctorate in Educational Leadership from the University of Pennsylvania in 2017. Prior to studying at Penn GSE, Dr. Carl taught middle school English in the School District of Philadelphia for five years and was the lead teacher for the middle school. In 2008, Drexel University recognized her as one of three recipients of the Drexel University Make a Difference Award for Outstanding Mentoring and Teaching. While at Penn GSE, Dr. Carl received multiple fellowships, including the Korn Fellowship for impact assessment to guide the research initiatives of the Center for the Study of Boys’ and Girls’ Lives.
Dr. Carl teaches courses related to qualitative research methods, practitioner research, mentoring strategies, family engagement, and sociocultural factors in education.
Research Interests and Current Projects
Dr. Carl’s research focuses on three primary strands, including (1) the study of qualitative and applied research methods, (2) ways that practitioners and students can conduct research to improve their schools, and (3) the social and cultural contexts of schooling and its implications on students, teachers, parents, and school leaders.
Dr. Carl believes strongly in the connections between theory and practice. Her recent co-authored book, Applied Research for Sustainable Change: A Guide for Education Leaders, is an example of how practitioners can use research to improve practice. Dr. Carl has worked with superintendents, principals, and teachers throughout Pennsylvania and New Jersey to put these ideas into practice.
Dr. Carl has been conducting qualitative research for more than a decade beginning in 2005 when she was awarded a Mellon Fellowship. Since then, Dr. Carl has led and participated in multiple qualitative and mixed methods research projects and written a seminal text with Sage about qualitative research methods, Qualitative Research: Bridging the Conceptual, Theoretical, and Methodological.
Dr. Carl has worked with school leaders, teachers, and students in a variety of contexts (public and independent) to consider ways to use research to drive school improvement as well as lead a multi-year, multi-site impact evaluation of the way that engaging in these projects influenced the schools and the individuals involved. She continues to research ways that practitioners can conduct and use research in their school contexts as well as support schools in the implementation of these projects.
Stemming from her experiences as a teacher, teacher leader, and teacher coach, Dr. Carl’s dissertation is a multi-year ethnographic study of a K–8 school in a low-income neighborhood in a large, urban city. It investigates the ways that hidden curricula of social reproduction and inequity shape schooling experiences. This research offers implications related to the socialization structures in schools and the role of cultural and social capital as well as about the importance of qualitative research, ways to incorporate student voice, and considerations for how policy is experienced by students and teachers.
