Gerald Letendre

About

Professor of Education and International Affairs, currently head of the Educational Policy Studies Department at the Pennsylvania State University and editor of The American Journal of Education. I received my B.A. (magna cum laude) in sociology from Harvard University and was awarded a Rockefeller Fellowship to do fieldwork among Tibetan refugees. I completed my graduate work at Stanford University where I received an Master's (sociology) and Ph.D. (education). I was the recipient of a Japan Foundation Fellowship, a Johann Jacobs Young Scholar Award, a Spencer Post-doctoral Fellowship, and was a Fulbright Senior Scholar at the University of Bremen in Germany (2003-2004). I have published on a broad range of topics in educational policy, and comparative/international education, including a new book out this spring with Motoko Akiba: Improving Teacher Quality: The U.S. Teaching Force in Global Context (Teachers College Press, 2009). Other recent books include National Differences, Global Similarities: World Culture and Current and Future Institutional Trends in Mass Schooling (with David Baker, Stanford University Press), Learning to be Adolescent: Growing Up in U.S. and Japanese Middle Schools (Yale University Press), and, with Becky Fukuzawa, Intense Years: How Japanese Adolescents Balance School, Work and Friends (Routledge/Farmer Press). My current research focuses on global trends in teacher work roles and work norms.Specialties: Comparative and International Education; Education Policy; International Affairs; Teacher Workforce Issue; Cultural Issues in Teaching