TV SHOW GUEST. 12.14.2013 HISTORY OF EDUCATION. Carol Anne Spreen an Associate Professor in the Department of Leadership, Foundations and Policy at the University of Virginia. Prior to being at UVA, she held a joint teaching position in the Organizational Leadership and Policy Studies and the International Education Policy programs at the University of Maryland. Her research, teaching, and policy work focus on issues of education rights, teachers, school reform and educational equity. Dr. Spreen received her Ph.D. in Comparative and International Education in 2001 from Teachers College, Columbia University. She also holds an M.Phil. in Educational Policy Studies from Teachers College, an M.Ed. in Instructional Leadership from the University of Illinois, and a B.Ed. in International Education Development from the American University.
Over the last decade Dr. Spreen has conducted research on school reform and restructuring in over 300 public schools across the United States. She has served as a Resident Scholar, Research Associate, Program Evaluator, and Technical Advisor for several of the nations leading educational research centers: School Redesign Network (SRN), National Center for Restructuring Education, Schools and Teaching (NCREST), Center for Research and Evaluation on Standards and Student Testing (CRESST), and North Central Regional Educational Laboratory (NCREL). Internationally, she has worked with many educational development and planning organizations, including the Academy for Educational Development, American Councils for International Education, Meridian Foundation, Organization of American States, the Institute for International Education Planning/UNESCO, the Soros Foundation, Bright Beginnings, Inc., and assisted numerous schools, districts and educational Ministries around the world.
Over the last two decades she has worked on equity, diversity and social justice initiatives in urban and rural education. She served as a Scholar-in-Residence at the School Redesign Network at Stanford University with Linda Darling Hammond, where she worked with several high schools to develop school-wide performance-based portfolio assessment systems. She was also a Visiting Scholar in the Comparative and International Education Program at Stanford. She currently holds a permanent Affiliate Faculty position at the Universities of the Witwatersrand and Johannesburg in South Africa and serves as an Associate Researcher with the Educational Policy Unit and the Center for Education Rights and Transformation where she works with teachers in rural and underserved schools in Southern Africa. She has won several academic and grant awards: the AERA Spencer Dissertation Fellowship, AED/NSEP Boren International Dissertation Research Fellowship, David Driskell Faculty Development Grant, World Bank/American Councils Teaching Fellowship Grant, UVA’s Equity and Diversity Fellowship, Academic Community Engagement Grants, Office of International Programs Faculty Travel Grants, and research grants from the Consortium on Gender, Race and Ethnicity and the Human Rights Working Group at UVA.
Dr. Spreen teaching interests include: human rights and education, policy analysis and school reform, comparative education, globalization and education, sociology of ed, international education policy development and planning. Her current research centers on studies of teacher education/ professionalization, educators’ work and lives, the politics of education and school reform, educational rights and equity policy, and social justice and instruction of diverse learners.