Joseph W. Check University of Massachusetts Boston, USA

Joseph W. Check, Ph.D. is Associate Professor and Chair of the Department of Educational Leadership in the Graduate College of Education, University of Massachusetts, Boston. He completed his B.A. at Boston College and his M.A. and Ph.D. in English at Tufts University. His prior publications include Politics, Language, and Culture: A Critical Look at Urban School Reform (Praeger, 2002), co-editorship of Writing Within School Reform, a monograph series of the Annenberg Institute for School Reform at Brown University, and book chapters and articles on literacy, practitioner inquiry, and urban school reform. He has supervised dissertations in school reform, professional development, literacy, home/school interactions, and special education. He has served as Principal or Co-Principal Investigator for numerous grant-funded professional development programs including a 4-year, $4M practitioner inquiry project in 14 urban school districts, funded by the DeWitt-Wallace Reader’s Digest Foundation. He is an experienced classroom instructor in master’s and doctoral level research courses.