Authentic Intellectual Work: Improving Teaching for Rigorous Learning

Build teacher capacity to promote students' authentic intellectual work

In spite of numerous reforms to improve rigor and relevance in the classroom, our schools have been slow to change. This work provides

Dr. Fred M. Newmann, Emeritus Professor of Curriculum and Instruction, University of Wisconsin–Madison, began his education career teaching high school history and social studies in 1959.  Dissatisfied with prevailing curriculum and instruction, he completed doctoral studies at Harvard and began to attack thebroader question:  In what ways can institutions, especially schools, in a modern culture be shaped to enhance community? 

This led to research and development of social studies and civic education curriculum, to planning an alternative school, to studies of alienation in secondary schools, theories of democratic citizenship, student community service, higher order thinking in high school curriculum, new approaches to student assessment, the restructuring of public, elementary, middle, and high schools, and professional development to build capacity in low-income schools.

At Wisconsin, he taught graduate courses in curriculum and assessment and directed national centers on Effective Secondary Schools and on Organization and Restructuring of Schools (k-12) which generated the initial research on Authentic Intellectual Work that was used in research on Chicago Public School reform. He has published widely and is recognized internationally as a leader in reform of curriculum, instruction and schooling.  He retired from the University of Wisconsin in 2001, and since 2007 helped develop the approach to professional development sponsored by the Center for Authentic Intellectual Work.

Dr. Dana L. Carmichael began her teaching career in Japan. After five years, she joined Minneapolis Public Schools as a social studies teacher. In 1995, Dana earned a Fulbright Scholarship, to write authentic curriculum in Namibia on how education promotes democracy in new nations. Her international background, which included living in Chile, Spain and Austria as a child, led her to pursue a PhD in Comparative International Development in Education Studies in the Department of Policy and Administration at the University of Minnesota-Twin Cities, which she completed in 2003.

Ultimately her passion for teaching urban students kept her in the Twin Cities. She first learned about Dr. Newmann’s work in the Mid-1990’s while serving as the K-12 District Social Studies Curriculum Specialist. She and Dr. Patricia Avery (University of Minnesota) collaborated on a number of early AIW projects. Her experiences directing these projects, including a Minnesota Best Practices grant (2000) and Federal Teaching American History (2001-2004), combined with additional experiences, including Director of NCLB, Staff Development Director, and Learning Forward academy graduate (2007), prepared her to accept Newmann’s invitation to join him and Dr. King on the Iowa-AIW project. Since 2008, she has served as Executive Director of the Center for Authentic Intellectual, based in Saint Paul, Minnesota, where she lives with her husband and two children. For more information about how the Center and supports educators learn to sustain transformational reform by promoting academic rigor through teacher reflection, visit the Center website at www.centerforaiw.com

Dr. M. Bruce Kingis a Faculty Associate with the Department of Educational Leadership and Policy Analysis (ELPA) at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. His work in ELPA concentrates on teaching courses on instructional leadership and teacher capacity, coordinating the Wisconsin Idea PhD cohort program in K–12 leadership, and building effective partnerships between the department and schools and districts.

Bruce has been a researcher with the Wisconsin Center for Education Research, where he contributed to two studies focused on Authentic Intellectual Work, the Research Institute on Secondary Education Reform for Youth with Disabilities and the Center for Organization and Restructuring of Schools. He received his PhD in curriculum and instruction from UW-Madison and taught upper elementary, middle, and high school for 11 years in Wisconsin, Minnesota, and Quito, Ecuador.

Bruce has been a research fellow at the University of Newcastle, New South Wales, and has consulted on two research projects in Australian schools that extended the body of research on AIW. He serves as associate editor for the international journal Teaching and Teacher Education, and has published in national and international research and practitioner journals. Currently, he provides professional development as an AIW coach in Wisconsin and Georgia.

Along with colleagues Fred Newmann and Dana Carmichael, Bruce recently published a companion book to this volume, Authentic Intellectual Work: Improving Teaching for Rigorous Learning (Corwin, 2015).