Meet Ellie Jurmann, a passionate future educator dedicated to making math both engaging and empowering for middle school students. Ellie shares her journey through Brown’s Bacc/MAT program, the joys of student teaching, and her hopes for creating a classroom where students feel supported, challenged, and valued.

Niyanta’s project merged her passion for engineering with her deep commitment to social justice

Professor Palella contributed an essay on queer comics to the forthcoming book, Teaching LGBTQ+ History: Practical Strategies and Voices of Experience

In this chapter, Professors Yoko Yamamoto and Jin Li, along with their co-author, examine East Asian immigrant parents' involvement in their children's education, with a particular focus on family-school relationships. Their research highlights the diverse models of family-school engagement that shape immigrant families’ motivations and approaches to supporting their children's learning both at home and in school.

In this paper, Professors Yoko Yamamoto and Jin Li, along with their co-authors, examine young children's perspectives on parental support for children's learning (PSCL) within Chinese immigrant families. While extensive research has explored PSCL in these communities—primarily from the parents' perspective—there is little insight into how young children themselves perceive and experience this support.

Nina’s capstone explored the ethical complexities of working within entrenched systems

Teacher training is costly and sometimes ineffective, especially if teachers are not fully engaged. In this paper, Professor Pierre de Galbert and his co-authors present findings from a randomized evaluation of an incentivized online teacher training program implemented in Bangladesh during COVID-related school closures. One treatment group received training and the other also received a moderate financial incentive.

Grace's capstone explored how strengthening alumni connections can create meaningful support systems for first-generation, low-income Black students at Brown

Developed by Professor Matthew Kraft, EDUC 0120: K-12 Education Systems and Climate Change aims to empower future educators to combat the climate crisis

Professor Rangel is working with undergraduate student researchers to investigate how Latinx students and their families navigate educational contexts and understand how differences in identity, such as immigration status and social class, impact their experience and outcomes.

Current UEP Student, Nasia Norris, on her internship with Parents Leading for Educational Equity

“At its core,” she explains, “it's about building relationships with students and leveraging their ‘funds of knowledge.’ This asset-based approach recognizes that all students bring valuable knowledge to the science classroom.”

Daysha graduated from the Master of Arts in Teaching program in 2023 and is currently a mathematics instructor at Eastside College Preparatory School in East Palo Alto, CA

The Education Department was a sponsor of the conference, which brings first-generation and low-income students together through panels, workshops and community-building activities.

The MAT's new teacher induction program is designed to support local graduates in the first five years of their teaching careers.

Developed by Jacques Lesure, EDUC 1015: Reimagining Power: Community-Driven Evaluation and Education, will explore how to use culturally responsive approaches to evaluate the effectiveness of social programs in partnership with three organizations serving young people in Providence.

Rachel Palumbo graduated from Brown's UEP Program in 2021 and is currently the Development Director at Providence Promise

The Master of Arts in Teaching (MAT) program at Brown University held a professional development day for teachers from Providence-area schools who mentor Brown MAT students in year-long classroom placements.

Dr. Jin Li, a Professor of Education and Human Development at Brown University, recently completed a book titled The Self in the West and East Asia: Being or Becoming. The book synthesizes philosophical ideas with psychological research to explore how the self is understood and functions in these two cultural systems.

Meet Sofia Fontaine, a member of the MAT English cohort, hailing from Los Angeles, CA. Sofia completed her undergraduate studies at Barnard College, where she majored in English and minored in Education Studies.

Education Faculty members Christopher Cleveland and Kenneth Wong weigh the potential impacts of both Republican and Democratic party platforms on U.S. education policy.

The Education Department is pleased to announce that Professors Kenneth Wong, David Rangel, and Matthew Kraft have been awarded funding to support innovative research projects aimed at improving educational opportunities for students.

John Papay, associate professor of education and economics and the director of the Annenberg Institute, weighs in on the Massachusetts Comprehensive Assessment System (MCAS) policy discussion.

Faculty members Christopher Cleveland and John Papay have received prestigious research grants as part of the Student Upward Mobility Initiative. They will join 16 other research teams nationwide exploring how PK–12 education can enhance students' future economic mobility.

Professor Tricia Kelly's fall 2024 course, EDUC 0425: "The Power of Translanguaging: Sustaining Multilingualism in Schools," was designed to equip students and teachers with the tools and insights needed to support multilingual learners in educational settings.

The Board of Overseers of the Annenberg Institute at Brown University established the permanent annual scholarship in 2012 for an Urban Education Policy masters student who most epitomizes the former Brown University president’s commitment to educational equity and social justice.

Our new "Insight to Impact" series invites faculty from the Education Department to share how their recent research can be applied in practical ways that improve education systems. Here, we look at Professor Cleveland's research papers, "Understanding Individualized Education Program (IEP) Goals at Scale" and "The Effects of Response to Intervention on Disability Identification and Achievement."

Bilena Dabalen ‘25 and Morgan Isabell ‘26 both spent this summer researching the history of for-profit companies affecting public education as UTRA Research Assistants for Professor Tracy Steffes, Chair of the Department of Education.

Professor Katie Rieser and UTRA students Meg Henning ‘25 and Eliana Lopez ‘25 worked together this summer to research and create a teacher induction program to support MAT alumni.

Ryan McCray MAT’25, who attended Brown Summer High School as a high school student, returned to teach Social Studies this summer as her first step in earning her Master of Arts in Teaching (MAT) degree from Brown.

In her new book, Professor Jin Li explores the philosophical origins of the concept of self in both Eastern and Western cultures and synthesizes her findings with cutting-edge psychological research to reveal a fundamental contrast.

Professor Laura Snyder, Senior Lecturer in Education, takes on undergraduate research assistants each fall and summer through the Undergraduate Teaching and Research Awards (UTRA) program. This summer, Harris Galvin ‘26 and Happy Ruth Jara ‘25, MAT’26 assisted Professor Snyder’s work of creating accessible and diverse high school English curricula.

This summer, MAT alums Cuauhtemoc Arizpe and Elliana Reynolds served as the principals for Brown Summer High School, guiding the high school enrichment program and a new cohort of MAT students.

Professor Matthew Kraft will serve a one-year term on the Council of Economic Advisers (CEA). The CEA advises the President on economic policy based on data, research, and evidence.

Individualized Education Plans (IEPs) contain detailed information about students’ experiences receiving special education services in schools. Using rigorous quantitative methods, Christopher Cleveland and co-author Jessica Markham (Boston University) are using digital IEPs from Indiana to identify statewide patterns in evaluations, goals, services, and placements.

Christopher Cleveland is an Assistant Professor of Education and Education Policy, holding a joint appointment in the Education Department and Annenberg Institute. His research and teaching focus on quantitative policy analysis in school finance, gifted and special education, and human capital.

Visiting Assistant Professor of Education, Jacques P. Lesure, shares about his recently-defended dissertation research on nonprofit leadership programs for “high-achieving” Black men, plans for future research projects, and courses he will teach at Brown.

The Brown Department of Education is happy to announce that faculty members Tracy L. Steffes and Diane Silva Pimentel have received promotions. Effective July 1, 2024, Professor Steffes has been promoted to Professor of Education and History and Professor Silva Pimentel has been promoted to Distinguished Senior Lecturer.

For her Urban Education Policy master's capstone project, Ramona Santos Torres AM'24 created a decision-making matrix for community-based organizations to assess the impacts of becoming the plaintiff in class-action lawsuits.

Namibia is a linguistically diverse country that attained independence in 1990. One of the most significant policy decisions at the time was to remove Afrikaans as one of the official languages, recognizing English only. In this paper, Kristof Iipinge (University of Namibia) and Pierre de Galbert (Brown University) critically review the criteria used to justify this decision and argue that the choice of these criteria, and the “value” attributed to European languages, compared with that of Namibian languages, were biased in a way to support the monolingual English policy.

Kelvin Roldán, Ed.L.D. is currently Deputy Commissioner for System Transformation within the Rhode Island Department of Education and will teach "Urban Education Policy: System and Governance" this summer, a foundational course for Brown's Urban Education Policy graduate students.

Kiana Harriel MAT'24 incorporated her passion for arts education into her social studies classroom at East Providence High School by utilizing Visual Thinking Strategies.

Budget constraints and limited supplies of local tutors have caused many K-12 school districts to pivot from individual tutoring in-person toward small-group tutoring online to expand access to personalized instruction. Professor Matthew Kraft and co-author Virginia Lovinson, Ph.D., conducted a field experiment to explore the effect of increasing student-tutor ratios on middle school students’ math achievement and growth during an online tutoring program.