Alice Lesnick

Alice Lesnick is Term Professor of Education and Director of the Bryn Mawr/Haverford Education Program, which offers programs for secondary teacher certification and a minor in educational studies. The Education Program also works with allied programs including the Teaching and Learning Initiative; the Minor in Child and Family Studies; the Concentration in Peace, Conflict, and Social Justice Studies; and the 360 program for interdisciplinary studies.  Alice is co-PI for Bryn Mawr's Noyce Teacher Scholarship Program, past leader of a faculty working group on inquiry-based approaches to science education, and a steering committee member of Serendip, a web space for idea-play. She teaches courses in literacies; qualitative/participatory action research; education, technology, and society; first year writing; and the gateway and culminating Program seminars. A faculty associate of the Institute for Writing and Thinking at Bard College since 1993 and a former preschool, elementary, middle, and high school English teacher, Alice studies collaborative and dialogic inquiry, processes of change, and new directions in social justice education, including via partnership with an early learning initiative in Northern Ghana and with a high school in West Philadelphia. Working with Bryn Mawr's Teaching and Learning Initiative, Alice helped build the Empowering Learners program, in which College staff, students, and faculty informally exhange skills and interests, and currently leads a summer syllabus design workshop for entering faculty. Her most recent publications include: (with Paul Grobstein, 2011), “Education Is Life Itself: Biological Evolution as a Model for Human Learning.” Evolution: Education and Outreach, Vol. 4, Issue 4, pp. 688-700; (with Anne Dalke, 2011), “Teaching Intersections: The Surprise of Gift-Giving and -Getting in the Cultural Commons.” Journal of Curriculum and Pedagogy. Alice holds a BA in English from Yale College; an MA in Liberal Education from St. John's College, Santa Fe; and a Ph.D. in Reading/Writing/Literacy from the University of Pennsylvania.

• social justice education
• education in high need schools
• urban education
• interdisciplinary approaches
• project-based learning
• gender and education
• global/international education