Ideas In Action

Donna Ford Donna Ford, professor of special education, is one of 14 university professors recognized by the Southeastern Conference for achievement in research and scholarship. The SEC announced April 10 the winners of its 2013 Faculty Achievement Awards. These annual awards honor professors from the SEC’s 14 member universities who… Read More

Marcy Singer-Gabella K-12 teachers across the country will have the opportunity to take a professional development course from Vanderbilt University faculty in 2014 via the university’s partnership with leading massive online open course provider Coursera. “Teacher professional development is one of the thorniest challenges in PreK-12 education. Teaching suffers because… Read More

Vanderbilt’s Peabody College begins the 2013–14 academic year with nearly a dozen new faculty members, 400 new master’s degree or Ed.D. students, and 35 new Ph.D. students—not to mention our usual complement of highly qualified undergraduates. We are excited! Our enthusiasm is also prompted by the establishment of a new… Read More

The present housing crisis has disrupted the residential stability of families, which is adversely affecting many children’s educational development, according to researchers at Peabody College. Read More

Department of Human and Organizational Development Sarah VanHooser Suiter (Ph.D., Vanderbilt, 2009), associate professor of the practice of human and organizational development, previously with Centerstone Research Institute Allison Patten McGuire (Ph.D., Vanderbilt, 2005), lecturer in human and organizational development Department of Leadership, Policy and Organizations Angela Boatman (Ed.D., Harvard, 2012)… Read More

In March, Peabody College was named the top graduate school of education in the country for the fifth consecutive year by U.S. & News World Report. Peabody bested programs at Johns Hopkins University (No. 2) and Harvard (No. 3) for the top spot, in addition to having its programs in… Read More

Vanderbilt University Professor William Doyle proposes a means of curbing college costs by replacing the existing federal aid system with a more-efficient model that emphasizes need-based aid and changing the way student loans are repaid to lower the default rate. With the largest declines in real average family incomes among those in the lowest 20 percent of the population, he argues that such reforms are crucial if college is to be more accessible and affordable. Read More

Vanderbilt University is leading the way in research that merges the fields of education and neuroscience by launching the country’s first Ph.D. program in educational neuroscience. Read More

Public school students who successfully complete English as a Second Language or bilingual education programs within three years appear to fare better in meeting basic math and reading proficiency standards than their peers who remain enrolled in language acquisition courses for five years or more. Read More

Between Citizens and the State: The Politics of American Higher Education in the 20th Century; Christopher P. Loss; Princeton University Press, 2011 Where would American higher education be without government support for research and student aid? Not where it is today, says Peabody College researcher Christopher Loss, who examines… Read More

Camilla P. Benbow Dean Camilla Benbow has been appointed to the Board of Directors for the Washington, D.C., think tank Education Sector. Education Sector is a non-profit, non-partisan organization committed to achieving measurable impact in education, both through improving existing reform initiatives and by developing innovative solutions to pressing education… Read More

Tamra Stambaugh Vanderbilt University’s Programs for Talented Youth at Peabody College will offer accelerated academic opportunities for up to 60 low-income gifted students through a $232,000 grant from the Jack Kent Cooke Foundation. Students from the highest-poverty urban and rural districts in Kentucky, Alabama and Tennessee will be recruited for… Read More

Lanette Waddell Fourteen students with a commitment to improving teaching in urban middle schools were the first to graduate May 11 from a two-year master’s program offered at Vanderbilt’s Peabody College in partnership with Metropolitan Nashville Public Schools. The Teaching and Learning in Urban Schools program was instituted in 2010,… Read More

Pratim Sengupta Pratim Sengupta has received recognition – and funding – for research he hopes will reshape elementary, middle and high school science as we know it. Sengupta, assistant professor of learning sciences and science education at Vanderbilt’s Peabody College of education and human development, has won a prestigious… Read More

Vanderbilt University’s Stella Flores was one of 21 researchers nationwide who developed an amicus brief summarizing key research on affirmative action in anticipation of the case, Fisher v. University of Texas, scheduled to go before the U.S. Supreme Court in October. The document was submitted by the Civil Rights Project… Read More

Children learn more from television viewing when parents participate as they would during book reading, new research from Vanderbilt finds. Read More

Ron Zimmer Closing schools can have negative effects on displaced students, but these ramifications can be counteracted if students are moved to schools that are substantially higher-performing. A new study from the RAND Corporation, Vanderbilt University’s Peabody College and Mathematica Policy Research finds that closing low-performing schools does not necessarily… Read More

Researchers at Peabody College are studying how people learn new words in hopes of determining optimal interventions for children who struggle with reading. A new educational neuroscience study offers clues on reading and plasticity in the brain that could lay the foundation for more targeted investigations of what types of… Read More

Former teachers may be an important source for the teacher labor supply, with as many as 30 percent of this population re-entering the field at some point, but who is most likely to return to the classroom after a hiatus? New research from Peabody College examines what factors affect teachers’… Read More

Tom Smith The National Center on Scaling Up Effective Schools at Peabody College announced in September the next phase of their partnership with Broward County Public Schools to study and “scale up” effective practices of these Florida high schools. As part of an ongoing, five-year study funded by the U.S. Read More