The Leadership and Organizational Performance program trains students who cultivate workforce leaders.

For much of the past century, the typical role of the school principal was to serve as the manager-in-chief, an administrator who made sure the boilers worked, the buses ran on time and new teachers were hired and placed in classrooms. In the wake of school reform during the last decade, however, the role of the principal has changed dramatically. For today’s principals, Peabody is creating professional development to provide a whole new skill set.

Visit Peabody College’s website at peabody.vanderbilt.edu Bonnie Arant Ertelt, Editor Donna Pritchett, Art Director Michael Smeltzer, Designer Nelson Bryan, Class Notes Editor Contributors: Joanne Lamphere Beckham, Kurt Brobeck, Lisa DuBois, Brent Meredith, Katie Payne, Jan Read, Cindy Thomsen, and Jennifer Wetzel Camilla Persson Benbow, Patricia and Rodes Hart Dean of Education and Human Development Jennifer [...]

In the winter issue of the Reflector, we examined “the embattled teacher” and the challenges faced both by current teachers and those who aspire to enter the profession.

Small Pleasures One of life’s small pleasures for me is sitting with a cup of tea on my patio relaxing in sunny California reading the Peabody Reflector. The winter 2012 issue was no exception. While I enjoy the overall format, photographs and layout of the magazine, I particularly enjoy reading the research news section. I was [...]

The Hubert H. Humphrey Fellows journeyed to Franklin, Tenn., on February 27 and 28 for Volunteer Tennessee’s third annual Tennessee Conference on Volunteerism and Service Learning. The fellows, educational leaders from nine developing nations, attended workshops on project-based learning in multicultural communities, integrating art into service, building youth leadership capacity and leveraging community resources. The [...]

The American Educational Research Association has selected four Peabody faculty members to be AERA Fellows. Lynn Fuchs, Steve Graham, Richard Lehrer and Joseph Murphy are among 36 scholars nationwide named to the 2012 class in recognition of their exceptional scientific or scholarly contributions to education research or significant contributions to the field through the development [...]

Peabody maintained its No. 1 national ranking in U. S. News & World Report for the fourth consecutive year. Peabody has topped the rankings, selected through expert opinions and statistical indicators, since 2009. Its administration/supervision and special education programs were also ranked No. 1 in the country, special education in a tie with its peer [...]

The American Educational Research Association has appointed Ron Zimmer, associate professor of public policy and education, as an incoming editor of its quarterly publication, Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis. The EEPA is a multidisciplinary policy journal that focuses on educational evaluation and educational policy analysis, and the relationship between the two. Zimmer will assume this [...]

The American Association of Colleges for Teacher Education presented its 2012 Outstanding Book Award in February to H. Richard Milner IV, associate professor of education and a founding director of the Learning, Diversity and Urban Studies graduate program in the Department of Teaching and Learning, for Start Where You Are, But Don’t Stay There: Understanding [...]

The Peabody College historical documentary Paying the Debt has won a Telly Award for scriptwriting and two silver awards for documentary and scriptwriting at the 18th Annual Communicator Awards. Founded in 1979, the Telly Awards is the premier award honoring outstanding local, regional and cable TV commercials and programs, the finest video and film productions, [...]

Dean Camilla Benbow will co-chair a new accrediting body designed to help ensure that every classroom in the nation has an effective teacher. The Council for the Accreditation of Educator Preparation is the new accrediting body being formed through the unification of two organizations charged with assuring quality in educator preparation—the National Council for the [...]

Vanderbilt University’s Programs for Talented Youth at Peabody College will offer accelerated academic opportunities for up to 60 low-income gifted students through a $232,000 grant from the Jack Kent Cooke Foundation, renewable for up to three years. Students from the highest poverty urban and rural districts in Kentucky, Alabama and Tennessee will be recruited for [...]

Children learn more from television viewing when parents participate than they would during book reading, new research from Peabody finds. In a first-of-its-kind study, children showed significant gains in vocabulary and comprehension when parents asked them questions about the content, rather than simply parking them in front of the screen. “There is a lot of [...]

Where would American higher education be without government support for research and student aid? Not where it is today, says Peabody College researcher Christopher Loss, who examines the history of the crucial relationship between the government and higher education in his new book, Between Citizens and the State: The Politics of American Higher Education in [...]

Researchers from Peabody are collaborators in the Regional Educational Laboratory Appalachia as part of a $28 million, five-year grant from the Institute for Education Sciences. REL Appalachia conducts empirical research in Kentucky, Tennessee, Virginia and West Virginia and brings evidence-based information to policymakers and educators to improve education practice. In partnership with the Center for [...]

As the United States officially ends its war in Iraq and thousands of service members return home, researchers at Peabody are working with the Department of Defense to ensure mental health concerns from deployments are not overlooked. Funded by the U.S. Army Medical Research and Acquisition Activity, faculty and staff from Peabody and the School [...]

Public school students who successfully complete English as a Second Language or bilingual education programs within three years appear to fare better in meeting basic math and reading proficiency standards than their peers who remain enrolled in language acquisition courses for five years or more. A new report from Peabody and the Migration Policy Institute [...]

Charter schools, rigorous standards, merit pay and tougher curriculum – these are the ingredients of American school reform. But Finland, the top-ranked country in the world in math, science and reading, has none of these elements. In fact, their approach to reform is exactly the opposite of the approach in the United States. Pasi Sahlberg [...]

Researchers at Peabody are studying how people learn new words in hopes of determining optimal interventions for children who struggle with reading. A new educational neuroscience study offers clues on reading and plasticity in the brain that could lay the foundation for more targeted investigations of what types of training may work for particular readers. [...]

What goes around comes around. That may seem like an old saw, but for two lucky Peabody students, it is anything but trite.

Monica Cox, PhD’05, is out to fill those gaps. The Peabody graduate is one of the top national researchers in the field of engineering education.

It’s a hot, muggy day near 4 p.m. at a lake in Ratchaburi Province, Thailand, and a young man has been fishing for a while. He has caught eight or nine redtail catfish, none huge, when suddenly, a behemoth catches on to his tilapia bait, and he fights with it for nearly 30 minutes.