Editors
Co-Editor Penny Bishop is Dean of the College of Education and Human Development at the University of Maine. Prior to that, she was Professor of Middle Grades Education at the University of Vermont, where she taught future middle grades educators and conducted research on schooling for young adolescents. She has served as Principal Investigator on numerous grants, bringing over 13 million dollars to Vermont schools to improve the learning and lives of middle grades students. Dr. Bishop has served as the Association for Middle Level Education's Research Advisory Board and as Chair of the American Educational Research Association's group on Middle Level Education Research. She is co-author of six books on effective middle grades practice. Her scholarship has appeared in outlets such as Journal of Adolescent and Adult Literacy, Middle Grades Research Journal, Research in Middle Level Education Online, The Reading Teacher, and Middle School Journal.
Co-Editor James Nagle is Professor and Chair of Education at Saint Michael's College. Currently, he teaches undergraduate and graduate courses in middle and high school curriculum and assessment, disciplinary literacy, organization, and educational research. He works extensively with Vermont teachers on proficiency-based education and personalized learning. His research investigates the intersection of school reform initiatives and collaborative teacher learning in middle and high schools. Dr. Nagle has been a Principal Investigator of grants to support teacher learning including Project CREATE (Curriculum Reform for All Teachers of ELLs), a 1 million dollar, U.S. Department of Education grant. Dr. Nagle is editor of English Learner Instruction through Collaboration and Inquiry in Teacher Education. His work has appeared as chapters in handbooks and in journals such as The Educational Forum, Middle School Journal, RMLE: Research in Middle Level Education Online, and Middle Grades Research Journal.
Editorial Board
Kenneth Anderson
Associate Professor
Howard University
Dr. Kenneth Alonzo Anderson, a former middle school teacher, earned a Ph.D. in Curriculum & Instruction, with a minor in Educational Research and Policy Analysis from North Carolina State University in 2005. Anderson's research interests includespan>praxis and policy issues related to black male achievement, middle grades education, teacher effectiveness, and content-area literacy development. Anderson is becoming noted for his ability to conduct large-scale data analysis and translate the results for scholars and practitioners. Anderson has served as Principal Investigator, Co-Principal Investigator, or Senior Personnel on externally-funded projects, exceeding 1.9 million dollars from organizations such as the National Science Foundation, American Educational Research Association, and Department of Homeland Security.
Gayle Andrews
Associate Professor
University of Georgia
Dr. Gayle Andrews is Professor in the Department of Educational Theory and Practice at the University of Georgia and Professor-in-Residence at Hilsman Middle School, Professional Development School District. Her research focuses on strengthening middle grades education for young adolescents, including studying improvement efforts in policy and practice affecting middle grades schools, the professional learning of middle grades educators, and the preparation of prospective middle grades teachers
Nan Bahr
Pro Vice Chancellor, Dean and Head of School of Education
Southern Cross University, Australia
Professor Nan Bahr is Pro Vice Chancellor (Students), Professor and Dean of Education at Southern Cross University. This new role for the University holds responsibility for oversight and strategic management for improved engagement, experience, and retention of students. Professor Bahr is also responsible for, for the quality of the Teacher Education programs, research, and service, in the field of education as Dean of Education. Nan has held leadership positions at Griffith University as Dean (Learning and Teaching) for the Arts, Education and Law Group; at Queensland University of Technology as Assistant Dean (Teaching and Learning) for the Faculty of Education; and, at the University of Queensland as the Director of Teacher Education. As a researcher, she has a national and international profile for educational research with over 130 publications including several books. Key research has been focused on the Middle Years of Schooling linking the fields of developmental psychology, adolescence with particular emphasis on cognition and cognitive development, resiliency and responsive schooling.
Cheryl Ellerbrock
Associate Professor of Middle Grades and General Secondary Education
University of South Florida
Dr. Cheryl Ellerbrock is an Associate Professor in Curriculum, Instruction, and Learning in the College of Education at the University of South Florida where she teaches middle grades, general secondary, and social science education courses. Her research centers on improving middle level experiences for young adolescent learners that includes investigating ways school environments are responsive to the basic and developmental needs of adolescent learners, exploring ways to foster a responsive middle-to-high school transition, promoting responsive middle level mathematics/STEM teaching for young adolescent learners, infusing arts-based learning in secondary schools to explore issues of global importance in developmentally responsive ways, examining ways to cultivate developmentally and culturally responsive secondary teachers and teacher educators, and exploring ways to enhance middle level teacher preparation nationally and internationally. Cheryl co-coordinates the undergraduate Helios STEM Middle Grades Teacher Preparation Residency program and the PhD program in Teacher Education. She currently serves as Chair for AERA’s Middle Level Education Research Group, member of AMLE’s Research Advisory Committee, and Secretary and Collegiate Representative for the Florida League of Middle Schools.
Christopher Harris
WestED STEM Program
Christopher Harris, Ph.D., is Senior Research Associate with the Science, Technology, Engineering, & Mathematics (STEM) program in Redwood City, California. His research focuses on the design, implementation, and study of STEM instructional innovations in K-12 classrooms and informal learning contexts. Of central interest is the design and research of curricula and assessments that capitalize on innovative technologies, align with the shifting policy context in science and engineering education, and make learning accessible for students of diverse backgrounds and abilities. His research often involves collaborative work in real-world educational settings for the purpose of informing both research and practice. Harris’ recent publications have addressed science education policy, instructionally supportive assessment, design-based implementation research, science teaching practice, and authenticity in science education.
Lisa Harrison
Associate Professor
Ohio University
Dr. Lisa Harrison, a former middle school mathematics teacher, is an associate professor of Middle Childhood Education (MCE) at Ohio University where she also serves as the MCE program coordinator. She earned her Ph.D. in Middle School Education at the University of Georgia. She teaches general methods courses in middle childhood education and teacher action research. Her research interest focuses on issues of equity and social justice in middle level education and teacher preparation. She also explores racial identity construction and the lived experiences of African American young adolescent girls.
Hilary Hughes
Associate Professor
University of Georgia
Dr. Hilary E. Hughes, a former middle school Language Arts teacher, is an Associate Professor in the Department of Educational Theory and Practice at the University of Georgia in Athens, GA. Her current research explores the intersections and experiences of administrators, educators, and youth when working to cultivate more equitable and just teaching, learning, and leadership in middle schools. Dr. Hughes's other research interests include justice and equity-oriented teacher education, critical youth studies, and utilizing phenomenology as both a philosophy and methodology. .
Rita MacDonald
Researcher
World-Class Instructional Design and Assessment (WIDA)
Rita MacDonald is an applied linguist who has worked in educational linguistics since 2001, and a former K-12 ESL teacher and teacher educator. As a researcher at the 41-state WIDA Consortium in the School of Education at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, she leads Making Science Multilingual, focused on inclusive and equitable methods of K-12 science instruction. Her recent research focuses on discourse-centered pedagogy. Her work is motivated by a vision of a socially just science education in which all students take up their rightful place, for the betterment of their own lives and for science itself.
Emily Nelson
Associate Professor
Eastern Institute of Technology, Taradale, New Zealand
Dr. Emily Nelson is a teacher educator at the Eastern Institute of Technology, Taradale, New Zealand. She is Programme Coordinator for an innovative practice-based teacher education degree and a teacher on an inter-disciplinary Master of Professional Practice degree. She is motivated by student voice as socially just action in primary, middle years and tertiary education. Emily’s research interests include enacting student voice within pedagogy in classrooms, post-structural theorising of power, and increasingly, investigating how preservice teachers respond to new configurations of schooling generated by new generation learning spaces..
Joe Rivers
Middle Grades Teacher
Brattleboro Area Middle School, Vermont
Joe Rivers is a social studies teacher at Brattleboro Area Middle School. He serves on their Leadership Team and acts as Department Leader as well. Joe is the President of the Brattleboro Historical Society and involves his students in many community-based projects. He is also on the staff of the Middle Grades Institute and has worked in Vermont middle grades education since 1981.
Diego Román
Assistant Professor of Bilingual/Bicultural Education
Department of Curriculum & Instruction, UW-Madison School of Education
Dr. Diego Román is an Assistant Professor in Bilingual/Bicultural Education at the Department of Curriculum and Instruction at the University of Wisconsin-Madison (Fall 2019). Prior to this appointment, he was an Assistant Professor in Bilingual Education at Southern Methodist University in Dallas, Texas. Dr. Román holds a B.S. degree in Agronomy from Zamorano University in Honduras and a M.S. degree in Curriculum and Instruction from the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater. He also earned a M.S. degree in Biology, a M.A. in Linguistics, and a Ph.D. degree in Educational Linguistics, all from Stanford University. At the K-12 level, Dr. Román taught middle school science to English Learners and newcomer students for seven years, first in rural Wisconsin and then in San Francisco, California. Dr. Román’s research interests are located at the intersection of linguistics, science education, and environmental studies. Specifically, he investigates the implicit and explicit ideologies reflected in the design and implementation of bilingual and science education programs particularly about environmental topics to multilingual students. He conducts his research from a Systemic Functional Linguistics perspective by analyzing the linguistic and multimodal characteristics of the discourse that take place in bilingual and science classrooms. Dr. Román has researched the language used to teach climate change at the middle school level and is currently leading an initiative that seeks to improve the quality of science, environmental, and bilingual instruction (Spanish/English and Kichwa/Spanish) in rural Wisconsin and Galapagos Islands, Ecuador.
Bogum Yoon
Professor
Binghamton University
Dr. Bogum Yoon is a professor of literacy education in the Department of Teaching, Learning, and Educational Leadership at the State University of New York at Binghamton (SUNY- Binghamton). Her research interests include teacher education, critical global literacies, English language learners, and critical multicultural education. She has published in journals including the American Educational Research Journal, the Journal of Adolescent and Adult Literacy, Middle Grades Research Journal, and The Reading Teacher. Dr. Yoon’s recent book, Critical Literacies: Global and Multicultural Perspectives, provides the theoretical and instructional framework of critical global literacies for teachers and teacher educators.