简介

I am Professor and Chair of the Department of Educational Psychology at the University of Minnesota. My primary research has focused on achievement processes in schools, particularly on social processes and on antecedents of educational success; on research methods for educational and other applied settings; and, recently, on action research approaches in challenged communities and engaged scholarship in urban settings. I have written three books, Basics of Structural Equation Modeling, Research in Educational Settings (with Stanley Deno), and, most recently, Research Methods in Social Relations (8th edition, with Carey Ryan), and numerous articles and chapters. My interest in what happens in diverse urban schools began when I became involved in a study of school desegregation while in graduate school. Those interests led me to study a range of issues in schools, including school schedules and structures, teaching approaches such as cooperative learning and conflict resolution, social influence processes, and student background characteristics including poverty, type of housing in which the family lived, language, ability, and race/ethnicity. This work has been facilitated by time I spent in the Saint Paul Public Schools as their director of research, evaluation and assessment. Recently, my work has expanded beyond schools to look more broadly at how universities engage urban communities to build partnerships addressing key social issues. I have complemented my substantive interests with methodology interests in structural equation methods, research methods, and program evaluation.