Professor elected to National Academy of Education

Kenneth Zeichner, the Hoefs-Bascom Professor of Teacher Education in the Department of Curriculum and Instruction and associate dean of the University of Wisconsin–Madison School of Education, has been elected to the prestigious National Academy of Education (NAEd).

The NAEd seeks advancement of the highest quality education research and its use in policy formulation and practice. Founded in 1965, the Academy consists of up to 200 U.S. members and up to 25 international associates who are elected on the basis of outstanding scholarship or outstanding contributions to education.

Since its establishment, the academy has sponsored a variety of commissions and study panels that have published proceedings and reports. Members also are deeply engaged in NAEd’s professional-development programs, such as the NAEd/Spencer Postdoctoral Fellowship Program and the Predoctoral Fellowship in Adolescent Literacy administered with generous funding from Carnegie Corp. of New York.

“The National Academy is the most selective group of scholars in education. We’re very pleased that Professor Zeichner’s intellectual leadership has been recognized in this way,” says Adam Gamoran, interim dean of the School of Education and a member of the NAEd.

Zeichner serves as the School of Education’s associate dean for undergraduate, international and teacher education. His scholarship and teaching focus on teacher education, teacher professional development and practitioner research, and he has published internationally on these issues.

He has studied teacher education reform throughout the United States and in Africa. He worked from 1994-2004 to implement teacher education reform in Namibia. He was a Fulbright scholar in Australia in 2004 and has held visiting appointments at Deakin University in Australia, the Universities of Gothenberg and Umea in Sweden, the University of Southern California, Simon Fraser University and the University of Minnesota.

Zeichner began his career as a teacher educator as a team leader in the National Teacher Corps in the 1970s. In 1976, he received his Ph.D. from Syracuse University in school organizational behavior and change and teacher education and joined the faculty at UW–Madison.

He has served as vice president of the Division of Teaching and Teacher Education (K) of the American Educational Research Association (AERA), co-chair of the AERA Panel on Research on Teacher Education that produced “Studying Teacher Education,” and on the boards of directors of the American Association of Colleges for Teacher Education (AACTE) and the National Academy of Education Committee on Teacher Education.

Zeichner was a principal investigator in the National Centers for Research on Teacher Education and Teacher Learning from 1985-95. His most recent book is “Teacher Education and the Struggle for Social Justice” (Routledge, April 2009).

Earlier this year, AACTE recognized Zeichner’s career of scholarship and teaching by honoring him with a Lifetime Achievement Award.

He joins several other School of Education faculty members who are current or emeritus NAEd members. In addition to Gamoran, professor of sociology and educational policy studies, they include: Gloria Ladson-Billings, the Kellner Family Professor in Urban Education in curriculum and instruction; William J. Reese, the Carl F. Kaestle WARF Professor in educational policy studies and history; Thomas Romberg, emeritus professor of curriculum and instruction; Elizabeth Fennema, emerita professor of curriculum and instructions; and Jurgen Herbst, emeritus professor of educational policy studies and history.