2012 Laureate
Kellner Family Chair in Urban Education and Professor of Curriculum and Instruction and Educational Policy Studies, University of Wisconsin-Madison
Dr. Gloria Ladson-Billings is the Kellner Family Professor of Urban Education in the Department of Curriculum and Instruction at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and the author of three critically acclaimed books,The Dreamkeepers: Successful Teachers of African American Children and Crossing Over to Canaan: The Journey of New Teachers in Diverse Classrooms. She completed an MA in education at the University of Washington and a PhD in curriculum and teacher education at Stanford University. Ladson-Billings is credited with coining the term “culturally responsive pedagogy,” and is one of the leaders in the field of culturally relevant teaching. Her more recent book Beyond the Big House: African American Educators on Teacher Education (2005), profiles seven prominent African American teacher educators—Cherry McGee Banks, Lisa Delpit, Geneva Gay, Carl Grant, Joyce King, Jacqueline Jordan Irvine, and William Tate—developing an understanding of how these African American scholars have shaped their relationship with the academy. Ladson Billings is a past president of the American Educational Research Association. Among her accomplishments as AERA president was a presidential address that aimed to redefine the “achievement gap” as “educational debt” – highlighting the social, political and economic factors that have disproportionately affected children of color in U.S. schools. Ladson-Billings has been elected to membership in the National Academy of Education and has been a senior fellow in urban education of the Annenberg Institute for School Reform at Brown University. Her scholarly awards include the H. I. Romnes Faculty Fellowship, the Palmer O. Johnson outstanding research award, a fellowship at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences, and the George and Louise Spindler Award from the Council on Anthropology and Education for significant and ongoing contributions to the field of educational anthropology.
Nominated by: Khaula Murtadha
