Explore our programs — offering exceptional academic preparation, opportunities for growth, and the tools to make an impact.
Find everything you need to apply for and finance your graduate education.
Stories, strategies, and actionable knowledge — putting HGSE's powerful ideas into practice.
With deep expertise that connects research, practice, and policy, HGSE faculty are leaders in the field.
Get to know our community — and all the ways to learn, collaborate, connect, develop your career, and build your network.
Faculty-led programs to deepen your impact and build your effectiveness as an educator and leader.
Access the premiere education subject library for Harvard University.
Access the Office of Student Affairs, the Office of the Registrar, Career Services, and other key resources.
Explore opportunities to grow, build connections, and create change.
Faculty
Our faculty consistently challenges the status quo and pioneers new approaches to teaching and learning. Yet their ideas are rooted in research, practice, and policy. With deep knowledge of the education field, HGSE professors influence current conversations in the media, giving educators and students a much-needed voice for positive change.
"While today’s technologies can undercut adolescents’ digital agency through efforts to tether them to their devices, teens are not helpless against the draw of technology."
"The takeaway [from this study] is that there is potential in using AI to help teachers. It's like having an intern to do tasks for you ... so you can focus more on learners and their struggles."
"How do we balance the needs of individual students in our classroom with the needs of the group? This is a small thing, but it has profound consequences for everyone’s learning."
"[Rest] allows us to take stock of what’s going on inside and shatters the myth that the only real social justice work happens outside of us. Rest forces us to reconcile the close relationship between our inner journey and how we show up in the world on the outside."
"We have been focused so much on academic freedom and free speech that we have neglected to set standards for a culture of mutual respect. It is necessary to do both."
"Those of us in higher education cannot fix everything, but we can at least try — we had better at least try — to begin to fix ourselves."
"We now know that some kids who step into kindergarten on their first day, with their little backpacks, have a heightened risk for struggling with learning to read. That’s a really important distinction in terms of policy and how early we should find these kids and intervene."
"My worry is that if we get rid of the SAT, you’re getting rid of the only way that a low-income student who’s academically talented has to distinguish themselves. Getting rid of the SAT means those people don’t have the opportunity to be noticed. I don’t think the SAT is perfect, but I think the problem isn’t the test. The problem is everything that happens before the test."
"In an ideal world, we would see people questioning higher education and simultaneously getting a lot of support for career pathways and other career and trade opportunities in K-12. I’m not sure, for the lowered interest in higher education, we are simultaneously seeing that kind of investment, culturally as well as practically."
"Especially given the liminal, post-pandemic moment we’re in, it’s important to grapple with this basic truth: if employees feel that their ideas and suggestions don’t matter, it’s very hard for them to feel engaged."
"I think it's a world that seems off the rails to them. I think it's unclarity about their job prospects. And I think social media turbocharged all of this."
"We've also seen in the past decade the emergence of a lot of research showing that what schools do really does matter for attendance, the way in which they communicate with families. Oftentimes parents think absence is much more common and that their student is more typical than is actually the case, and correcting those perceptions can be powerful."
"Before parents and teachers rejoice and hand over tablets to their kids for the entire day, it’s important to note that the average positive effect hides significant variation in app effectiveness. ... It’s crucial to explore the characteristics of the studies and apps that may explain these differences."
“They don’t currently have sufficient evidence to support high-stakes college admissions decisions. They have a lot of research they need to do and publish transparently.”
"We would just be as right to sound the alarm about a parent mental health crisis as a teen mental health crisis. I don't think we're going to get very far with teens unless we also support the parents."
“Don't shy away from controversy. That's where really rich learning happens. And more importantly, I think the significant learning that we need for a really functioning democracy.”
"Educators have fixated on phonics to treat covid-19 learning loss. In doing so, they are shortchanging something of equal importance: the role knowledge plays in helping children become good readers."
“The real story of the pandemic has been less about decline and recovery than it has been about inequality, inequality, inequality.”
"American higher education certainly has its problems. But the bad vibes around college threaten to obscure an important economic reality: Most young people are still far better off with a four-year college degree than without one."
"Leaders of learning must do more than assess the quality of instruction. They must continually examine the larger system that either supports or constrains excellent instruction and both seek and use shared insight to cultivate collaborative change."
"It’s genuinely very hard to teach reading. We haven’t been as dogged in supporting teachers ... in teaching reading in a way that is as sophisticated and complex as it really is."
"Parents’ influence on teens is profound. It’s perhaps the most important influence on teens’ lives, and we are not going to get very far in solving the teen mental health crisis if we don’t pay attention to parents and to caring for the caregivers."
"Human teachers remember what it was like to be a learner. AI has no sense of that at all."
“Student loan repayments can be humane and sensitive to people’s financial situation. And the more simple and automatic it is, the more effective it’s going to be.”
"Normal school is not going to be enough in the areas that were closed for much of the 2021 school year. And different districts made different public health decisions. And so different districts have different amount of work to do to help students catch up. And that’s what’s been missed."
“Education is important, but it’s no panacea. And an education-only narrative misses other structural features of our society that have to change. ... The core thing is how much race matters.”
“The most favorably aligned institutions are by and large top-tier institutions. So, the argument that’s often made that you can’t have diversity and philanthropy seems to be at least questioned by the data that we collected … It’s possible to be a wealthy institution and have a diverse board at the same time.”
"Imagine a world where we could harness the power of AI to provide teachers with automated, valuable feedback. ... The feedback could range from something simple like student-teacher talk ratio to complex teaching strategies like how often the teacher takes up student ideas. Teachers can choose how often they want this feedback to allow for immediate adjustment and continual improvement."
Professor Thomas Kane joined CBS News to discuss why schools have struggled to get a handle on COVID recovery.
Professor David Deming speaks on the Plain English podcast about what his latest study tells us about college, fairness, and the American dream.