The Principals' Center

Ebony Bridwell-Mitchell is the Herbert A. Simon Professor of Education, Management and Organizational Behavior at the Harvard University Graduate School of Education. She studies how institutional and organizational conditions enable and inhibit the implementation of U.S. K-12 education reform policies. Her research, employing both qualitative and quantitative methods, such as social network analysis, has been published in high-impact peer-reviewed journals across fields, translated for practice-oriented outlets, supported by funders, such as the National Science Foundation, and awarded by professional associations. Ultimately, Bridwell-Mitchell’s research program aims to provide researchers, policymakers, and practitioners with theoretically grounded and empirically rigorous conceptual frameworks, analytical tools, and research evidence needed to improve schools and extend educational opportunities, especially for underserved students. The values driving her work were instilled by parents with long careers in education and human services and a family with rural roots prizing integrity, hard work, and fair play. Bridwell-Mitchell’s early experiences in Montessori education taught her to value self-directed, interdisciplinary learning, and problem solving as much for the sake of personal fulfillment as individual attainment. She brings these values not only to her work as a researcher and teacher in academia but also when partnering with leading-edge education organizations to support organizational development, institutional change, and school reform across the country.

Pamela A. Mason, Ed.D. is a senior lecturer on education, a, co-chair of the Literacy and Languages concentration, and director of the Jeanne Chall Reading Lab at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. Her professional and research interests encompass the role of culturally sustaining pedagogy in promoting literacy achievement, the interaction of text complexity and background knowledge, qualitative and quantitative literacy assessment, and the efficacy of the roles of reading specialists and literacy coaches. Mason has extensive experience as a reading/language arts curriculum coordinator, and she also was an effective elementary school principal, serving in both urban and suburban districts in the Boston area. Mason collaborates with colleagues nationally and globally on preparing reading specialist teachers and literacy coaches, developing the capacity of school leaders as literacy advocates, and evaluating school-wide literacy programs. Mason is active in the International Literacy Association, serving on the Assessment Task Force and in the National Council of Teachers of English, serving on the Standing Committee Against Censorship. She is also an active member of the Literacy Research Association and served on the Reading Standing Committee of the National Assessment of Educational Progress. She is a past president of the Massachusetts Association of College and University Reading Educators and the Massachusetts Reading Association. Mason is a member of the Board of Trustees for Cathedral High School (Boston), GrubStreet (a creative writing center), and the WGBH Educational Foundation, as a trustee emerita.

Katherine Merseth's work concentrated on charter schools, teacher education, mathematics education, and the case-method of instruction. At Harvard, she founded the Harvard Children's Initiative, a university-wide program focusing on the needs of children as well as the School Leadership and the Teacher Education Programs at the School of Education. In mathematics education, she was the principal investigator of the Mathematics Case Development Project funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF) and the Massachusetts Math and Science Partnership working with middle school mathematics teachers using classroom based cases; she also served as co-principal investigator of the Teacher Education Addressing Mathematics and Science in Boston and Cambridge Project. Her book, Windows on Teaching Mathematics: Cases of Secondary Mathematics Classrooms (Teachers College Press), represents work in mathematics education and the case method while her involvement as a case method teacher of school administrators exists in her Cases in Educational Administration (Longman). Internationally, she has edited four volumes of cases about classroom practice in South Africa, Chile, Brazil and a forthcoming volume from Jordan. In the charter field, she completed a two-year study examining best practices in high performing urban charter schools which culminated in the award-winning book, Inside Urban Charter Schools (Harvard Education Press). Merseth was awarded a Harvard Initiative on Teaching and Learning (HILT) award to explore the use of a new technology platform to enhance the teaching of controversial topics. She also was named as one of 15 outstanding professors at Harvard and was awarded, in 2018, the Harvard Phi Beta Kappa Prize for excellence in teaching. Merseth taught in the General Education Program of Harvard College. Merseth served as a curriculum developer, teacher, and administrator in K-12 schools. In addition to her Harvard doctorate, Merseth holds a bachelor's in pure mathematics from Cornell University, a master's in pure mathematics from Boston College, and a master of arts in teaching secondary mathematics from Harvard.