The events of this past year have magnified differences in our culture, and produced conflict – but active efforts, including protest, can lead to reform. In many ways, this idea animates all of the activities we undertake at Deans for Impact. We believe in the power of helping existing and future educators practice better pedagogy with all students, so that over time, our work – and the work of so many others – will join together such that the stark racial segregation we witnessed during one school visit will seem an unconscionable aberration, rather than an accepted norm.

Texas recently announced it would make educator data available to the public in order to meet the requirements of a bill passed during the 85th Regular Session, which concluded on May 29, 2017.

From Sara Quay’s very first day in college, she knew where she was headed: to a career in higher education. What she didn’t know was just how…

At Deans for Impact, we’ve published a number of posts debunking common misconceptions about how our brains work. And we’ve also learned how to present our arguments more effectively in order to better persuade our readers about the myth of learning styles. So when I came across Stephen Brookfield’s article in the journal Adult Learning about the “myths and realities in facilitating adult learning,” I was more than intrigued.

If you’re a mentor teacher hosting a student teacher in your classroom, you might have questions about how to help those pre-service teachers get ready.

Feedback is a critical component in developing teaching skills. But what if teacher-candidates are resistant to hearing that feedback?

Two weeks ago, Deans for Impact released Building Blocks, our digital publication summarizing our research visits to 18 educator-preparation programs over the past two years. One of our goals was to make the hard work of teacher preparation more visible to the broader education community, and the early wave of enthusiasm and warm feedback suggests we may have hit our target.

Today marks a major milestone in the journey of Deans for Impact.

A little over two years ago, we set out to visit the educator-preparation…

A new report, Scaling Solutions Toward Shifting Systems, captures a subtle but important “shift in the discourse” in the philanthropic community toward supporting more sustained, deeper-level transformations in society. Benjamin Riley argues this is a very good thing, as philanthropic organizations can play key roles in transforming complex systems when they remain committed to sustained change over time.

Tom Philion is the dean of the College of Education at Chicago’s Roosevelt University, which was founded in 1945 with a mission of making higher education available to all students who qualify academically, regardless of their backgrounds. Roosevelt is the second most diverse college in Illinois, and about 45 percent of the university’s students are the first in their families to attend college. We spoke to Tom recently about how his personal experiences have influenced his approach to educator preparation and why he joined Deans for Impact.