Excellence in Teacher Learning Scholarship
University of Delaware Professor Laura Desimone elected to the National Academy of Education
Laura Desimone, L. Sandra and Bruce L. Hammonds Professor in Teacher Education and director of research in University of Delaware’s College of Education and Human Development (CEHD), has been elected to membership in the National Academy of Education (NAEd), receiving one of the field’s highest honors.
As a national expert in designing meaningful and effective opportunities for teacher learning, she is one of 19 national and international scholars elected to membership this year. NAEd advances high-quality education research and its use in policy and practice, and its members are elected on the basis of outstanding scholarship related to education.
“Laura Desimone’s induction into the National Academy of Education is well-deserved,” said Rena Hallam, interim dean of CEHD. “Her research in teacher learning, school and district-wide reform and education policy has been such a valuable resource for school leaders, policymakers and colleagues in the field. Her work has helped support teachers and improve student outcomes in schools across the nation.”
Excellence in teacher education scholarship
Desimone’s research focuses on the role of teacher learning in state, district and school-level reforms designed to improve instruction and student learning. With more than 40,000 research citations and funding from the National Science Foundation, the Institute for Education Sciences (IES), the Spencer Foundation and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Desimone guides the field with studies of coaching, mentoring, standards-based reform, literacy and STEM interventions that focus on supportive and effective teacher learning.
“Professor Desimone’s work lies in one of the most important areas in education research: the intersection of education policy and instruction, focusing particularly on teachers’ responses to the policy environment in the U.S. and internationally,” said Barbara Schneider, John A. Hannah University Distinguished Professor in the College of Education and the Department of Sociology at Michigan State University. “Her papers have addressed policy attributes, elements of professional development, the quality of professional development and comprehensive school reform. Her work exhibits versatility, ranging from theoretical to methodological, synthesis to empirical analysis, all illuminating her central issue from varied perspectives.”
For example, in a recent Bill and Melinda Gates-funded study, Desimone investigated how K-12 teachers’ beliefs about culturally responsive teaching and professional learning influenced their teaching practices. This teaching approach builds on students’ strengths and provides motivating and ambitious classroom instruction to support their academic success. Desimone and her co-authors found that teachers’ beliefs about their own self-efficacy — their self-confidence and beliefs about their teaching capacity — made a big difference in whether they adopted culturally responsive instruction.
“Our work builds on previous work that has shown how impactful, ambitious and culturally responsive teaching can be for students,” said Desimone. “Following that work, we wanted to better understand how to support teachers in developing and using high-quality instructional strategies that work for them and their students.”
Desimone also frequently partners with school districts throughout the region, helping them improve teacher and student learning through school or district-wide reforms. For example, she worked with the School District of Philadelphia through Shared Solutions, a research-to-practice partnership between the School District of Philadelphia and the University of Pennsylvania Graduate School of Education. Through this partnership, Desimone contributed to studies of the district’s school improvement efforts and a leadership initiative.
“Laura has a distinctive ability to understand the needs of district and academic audiences, and can find a way for a project to provide meaningful information to both,” said Joy Lesnick, deputy chief of research, evaluation and academic partnerships in the School District of Philadelphia. “During the time we worked together, she was always willing to respond to an urgent call or text, join a meeting, contribute to a brainstorming session or help make sense of findings during a results conversation so that the research can be used as quickly as possible to inform decision-making.”
Throughout her career, Desimone has earned recognition for her contributions to teacher learning and education. For example, in 2015, she received the Association of Teacher Educators’ Distinguished Research in Teacher Education Award for her 2014 article, “Formal and informal mentoring: Compensatory, complementary, or consistent?,” published in the Journal of Teacher Education. This award recognizes outstanding investigations of teacher education and/or student learning.
In 2019, Desimone won the SAGE 10-Year Impact award, given to authors of articles published in a SAGE journal that received the most citations over the span of a decade. She received this award for her article, “Improving Impact Studies of Teachers’ Professional Development: Toward Better Conceptualizations and Measures,” published in Educational Researcher. In the same year, Desimone was also named an American Educational Research Association Fellow, an honor that recognizes excellence in education research and interdisciplinary scholarship.
Desimone is the third member from UD to receive this honor. She joins Roberta Michnick Golinkoff, Unidel H. Rodney Sharp Chair and professor in CEHD’s School of Education (SOE), and Nancy C. Jordan, Dean Family Endowed Chair of Education and professor in the SOE.
Header image caption: Laura Desimone is L. Sandra and Bruce L. Hammonds Professor in Teacher Education in UD’s College of Education and Human Development.
Article by Jessica Henderson. Photos by Lane McLaughlin.