Professor Cheryl Craig, of the UH College of Education's curriculum and instruction department, will be inducted as a Fellow of the American Educational Research Association (AERA) the world's largest and most respected body of educational researchers.
"I've worked very hard, especially in light of the university's push for Tier One status," Craig said. "Being honored in this way brings its own reward, for me, the college and the university."
AERA honors national and international educators who have made substantial research contributions to the field. Through these honors, AERA conveys its commitment to excellence in research.
"It has been a great privilege to conduct research studies alongside teachers and children in the Greater Houston area," she said. "In my view, field-based research holds great possibility for bringing about change in schools."
Craig's research examines the impact of school reform agendas on teacher knowledge, and how those reforms and policies impact student learning. She is the author of 40 scholarly papers that have been published in such prestigious publications as the American Educational Research Journal, Teachers College Record and Curriculum Inquiry. She also has a myriad of other publications recognized by the British Education Index.
In his nomination letter to AERA, colleague Professor Jerome Freiberg called her, "an exceptional scholar, willing to devote her intellectual capacity and considerable time in the effort to understand and improve the learning milieu of schools and students and educators ... within the ever-changing context of reform movements."
Craig's 2004 publication, "The Dragon in School Backyards: The Influence of Mandated Testing on School Contexts and Educators' Narrative Knowing" is one of her most referenced papers. In it, she details how local, state and national policies in one low-income high school conflicted with efforts to improve the campus. She showed how these tensions greatly limited the impact of teachers and principals on their at-risk students' learning.
The AERA award also takes into account books and chapters authored by Craig. Her 2003 book, "Narrative Inquiries of School Reform," examined how the daily school lives of teachers and principals in four schools were affected by school reform agendas. Additionally, Craig's supervisory work with graduate and doctoral students, along with her leadership roles in professional service organizations, brought the full picture of her lifework into view.
Craig and others in the 2011 Class of Fellows will officially be inducted April 9th during a ceremony at AERA's Annual Meeting.
"I'm deeply honored to be in the company of other educational researchers from many prestigious institutions from around the world. I am also proud to represent UH," she said.
Other UH faculty previously inducted as Fellows are: Professor David Francis, the Hugh Roy and Lillie Cranz Cullen Distinguished Professor and chair of the department of psychology; Professor Jerome Freiberg, Moores Professor and director and principal investigator of the Consistency Management & Cooperative Discipline; Professor Robert McPherson, executive associate dean of the UH College of Education.
For more information on Professor Cheryl Craig, visit http://www.coe.uh.edu/directory/employee-profile/index.php?d=29
For more information about the UH College of Education visit http://www.coe.uh.edu/index.php
For more information about the American Educational Research Association visit http://www.aera.net/Default.aspx?id=26