Reason & Rigor: How Conceptual Frameworks Guide Research

Sharon M. Ravitch, Ph.D. is a Senior Lecturer at the University of Pennsylvania’s Graduate School of Education where she is Research Co-Director at the Center for the Study of Boys’ and Girls’ Lives and a Founding Co-Director of Penn’s Inter-American Educational Leadership Network. She serves as the Principal Investigator of Semillas Digitales (Digital Seeds) a multi-year applied development research initiative in Nicaragua (http://www2.gse.upenn.edu/nicaragua/). Ravitch’s research integrates across the fields of qualitative research, education, applied development, cultural anthropology, and human development and has four main strands: (1) Practitioner Research as a means to engendering sustainable professional and institutional development and innovation; (2) International applied development research that works from participatory and action research approaches (projects currently in the US, Nicaragua, and India); (3) Ethnographic and participatory evaluation research; and (4) Leader education and professional development. Ravitch has published three books: Reason and Rigor: How Conceptual Frameworks Guide Research (with Matthew Riggan, Sage Publications, 2012); School Counseling Principles: Diversity and Multiculturalism (American School Counselor Association Press, 2006) and Matters of Interpretation: Reciprocal Transformation in Therapeutic and Developmental Relationships with Youth (with Michael Nakkula, Jossey-Bass, 1998). Ravitch earned two master’s degrees from Harvard University in Human Development and Psychology and in Education and a doctorate from the University of Pennsylvania in an interdisciplinary program that combined anthropology, sociology, and education.

Matthew Riggan, Ph.D., is a Senior Researcher at the Consortium for Policy Research in Education at the University of Pennsylvania, and an Adjunct Assistant Professor in Penn’s Graduate School of Education. His current research focuses on formative assessment in elementary mathematics; assessing analytic and problem-solving skills for postsecondary readiness; systemic reform to support science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) education; and factors supporting or undermining the scale-up of promising reforms in urban school districts. He teaches courses in qualitative research design, data collection, and analysis, and has worked extensively on developing qualitative and mixed methods approaches to program theory evaluation and analysis of video data. He holds a doctorate in Anthropology and Education from the University of Pennsylvania.