Gloria Ladson-Billings

Gloria Ladson-Billings is the Kellner Family professor of Urban Education in the Department of Curriculum & Instruction at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. A pedagogical theorist, her research examines socio-cultural issues in classrooms and teaching from a stance that recognizes the power of culture as a means for supporting the education of all children;she is also best known for coining the term culturally relevant pedagogy. Her work also examines the role of critical race theory in education.Ladson-Billings has won numerous awards for her work, of which include the Romnes Faculty Fellowship, the Spencer Post-doctoral Fellowship, and the Palmer O. Johnson outstanding research award. Additionally, she has been awarded the Hilldale Award, the highest faculty honor given to a professor at the University of Wisconsin for outstanding research, teaching, and service in 2007 and was a recipient of the 2008 Distinguished Service Award from Teachers College, Columbia University. Ladson-Billings was the president of the American Educational Research Association (AERA) from 2005 to 2006. During the 2005 AERA annual meeting, Ladson-Billings delivered the presidential address, "From the Achievement Gap to the Education Debt: Understanding Achievement in U.S. Schools." Her address discusses how the term racial achievement gapunfairly constructs students from a deficit orientation, and instead suggests the term education debt to enable us to move towards a discourse that "holds us all accountable" as she nests her address within the historical, moral, socio-political, and economic factors that have disproportionately affected African-American, Latino, Asian, and other non-white students.

Books: The Dreamkeepers: Successful Teachers of African American Children; Crossing over to Canaan: The Journey of New Teachers in Diverse Classrooms; Beyond the Big House: African American Educators on Teacher Education.