Teaching in Context 10 Years Later

Ten years after Teaching in Context: The Social Side of Education Reform, the case it made — that the social and organizational conditions in which teachers work shape what reform can accomplish — continues to be deepened by a decade of research, and still largely ignored by a decade of policy choices.

The current moment brings the question back into sharp relief. Forty-plus states have passed science-of-reading legislation. Curricula are being mandated. Teachers are being asked to retrain. Districts are scrambling to implement. And underneath it all sits a question the reform conversation rarely centers: do teachers have the time required to do this work well?

This panel places time as a central variable within the broader umbrella of social, organizational, and infrastructural conditions for instructional improvement, and asks what the past decade has taught us — and what it means for the literacy reform moment we are in.

Panelists:

Matthew Kraft, Professor Education and Economics, Brown University

Susan Neuman, Professor, Childhood and Early Literacy, New York University Steinhardt School

Esther Quintero, Senior Research Fellow, Albert Shanker Institute

Jack Schneider, Dwight W. Allen Distinguished Professor at the University of Massachusetts Amherst