Faculty

Joseph McDonald

Professor of Teaching and Learning

Joseph McDonald

Phone: 998 5447
Email:

Joe McDonald is Professor of Teaching and Learning at the Steinhardt School of Culture, Education, and Human Development, New York University. He is the author or co-author of seven books about schooling and teaching – including Going to Scale with New School Designs: Reinventing High School (Teachers College Press, 2009), and The Power of Protocols (Teachers College Press, 2007).  He is currently completing a research project funded by the Annenberg and Spencer Foundations on the last decade of school reform in five American Cities.

McDonald has been one of the leaders of NYU’s school partnership project which involves close relationships with schools in the Lower East Side, East Harlem, and the South Bronx.  He also leads an effort to provide  training and consulting in support of leadership for accountability in these as well as other New York City schools.

McDonald is a member of NYU’s English Education faculty, and was for many years a high school English teacher as well as a high school principal. He is co-founder of University Neighborhood High School on the Lower East Side, and NYU liaison to Fannie Lou Hamer High School in the South Bronx. He has been Co-editor of the Series on School Reform at Teachers College Press since 1994. He is currently a consultant to the Partnership for Innovation in Compensation for Charter Schools at New York’s Center for Educational Innovation, and also a member of the Research Advisory Council of the Chicago Public Education Fund.

McDonald has a doctorate in education and Master of Arts in Teaching English from Harvard University, as well as a Bachelor of Arts magna cum laude degree in English from the University of Scranton. Before coming to NYU, he taught at Brown University where he led the teacher education program in English and served as the first Director of Research at the Annenberg Institute for School Reform, as well as Senior Researcher for the Coalition of Essential Schools. McDonald has been at NYU/Steinhardt since 1998, and has served as Associate Dean for Academic Affairs and also as Associate Dean for Community and Global Initiatives.


Awards

  • Member of the NY State Academy of Teaching and Learning
  • Spencer Foundation Post-Doctoral Fellowship
  • Outstanding Teacher Award, Bush Educational Leaders Program
  • Community Service Award, New York University
  • Finis and Engleman Award, American Association of School Administrators
  • Community Service Award, University Neighborhood High School

Degrees Held

  • Ed.D. Harvard University
    Administration, Planning, and Social Policy
  • M.A.T. Harvard University
    English Education
  • B.A. University of Scranton
    English

Courses

McDonald has taught a large variety of courses at the graduate, undergraduate, and high school levels.  They include Methods of Teaching English, Undergraduate and Graduate Seminars in English Student Teaching, Doctoral Seminar in Curriculum and Instruction, Doctoral Seminar in Evaluation, and high school courses in English and Drama.

Research Interests

  • School reform
  • Teacher education
  • Educational policy
  • Study of teaching

Publications

  • Going to Scale with New School Designs: Reinventing High School (Teachers College Press, 2009). With E. J. Klein & M. Riordan. (link)
  • Power of Protocols (Teachers College Press, 2003, 2007). With N. Mohr, A. Dichter & E. McDonald. (link)
  • School Reform Behind the Scenes (Teachers College Press, 1999). With T. Hatch, E. Kirby, N. Ames, N. Haynes & E, Joiner. (link)
  • Doing What You Mean to Do in School Reform (Annenberg Institute for School Reform, 1998). With D. A. Schon.
  • Redesigning School (Jossey Bass, 1996). (link)
  • Graduation by Exhibition: Assessing Genuine Achievement (ASCD, 1993). With S. Smith, M. Finney, D. Turner & E. Barton. (link)
  • Teaching: Making Sense of an Uncertain Craft (Teachers College Press, 1992). (link)
  • Scaling Up the Big Picture, essay one (February 2003). With E. Klein, M. Riordan & S. Broun.
  • Scaling Up the Big Picture, essay two (June 2003). With E. Klein & M. Riordan.
  • Scaling Up the Big Picture, essay three (February 2004). With E. Klein & M. Riordan.
  • Scaling Up the Big Picture, essay four (August 2004). With E. Klein & M. Riordan.

Chapters

· The National Writing Project: Scaling up and down.  With J. Buchanan and R. Sterling, in S. Bodilly and T. Glennan (Eds.), Scaling Up Reform Interventions (Santa Monica: Rand, 2004)  ·   High school in the twenty-first century: Managing the core dilemma, in F. Hammack (Ed.), Is There a Future for the Comprehensive High School?  (Teachers College Press, 2004)  ·   World’s fair: Sixty years of American education in and around a former dump, in W. Holtkamp (Ed.), Rediscovering America: New Approaches to American Culture (Metzler Verlag Stuttgart, 2001)  ·   Students’ work and teachers’ learning, in A. Lieberman and L. Miller (Eds.), Caught in the Act: Professional Development for Teachers (Teachers College Press, 2001) ·  Below the surface of school reform: Vision and its foes, in R. Glaser and L. Schauble (Eds.), The Contributions of Instructional Innovation to Understanding Learning (Lawrence Erlbaum, 1996)

 

Selected Articles

  • Capacity for school reform: The role of teacher networking.  With Emily Klein, Teachers College Record, Fall 2003. 
  • Teachers studying student work: Why and how?  Phi Delta Kappan,  October 2002.
  •  Redesigning curriculum: New conceptions and tools.  Peabody Journal of Education, winter 1999. 
  • When outsiders try to change schools from the inside.  Phi Delta Kappan, November 1989.
  • Teaching the documentary arts: Combining writing with research and photography.  English Journal, November 1985.

Presentations

  • Working Together for Student Success: How Schools and Universities Can Bridge their Culture Gap
    Presentation at the Winter Symposium, New Teacher Center, San Jose, CA, February 3, 2009(view)
  • Autonomy and Accountability in New York City School Reform
    Co-presentation with Leslie S. Siskin, Annual Meeting of the American Educational Research Association, San Diego, CA, April 2009 [Paper available for download after May 1, 2009]
  • School-University Partnerships: Power of Complementarity
    Presentation at the Annual Meeting of the American Educational Research Association, San Diego, CA, April 2009(view)