USU Professor Receives Visiting Professorship Award in the UK

Barry Franklin, a professor in Utah State University’s School of Teacher Education and Leadership, recently received a highly prestigious visiting professorship award from the Leverhulme Trust in the United Kingdom.

 

The Leverhulme Trust was established in 1925 to support research and education. The trust is one of the largest grant organizations in the UK, and it funds a variety of different grants.

 

Franklin will serve as a visiting professor in the Institute of Education at the University of London. Franklin’s award actually is to the institution itself, to enable the institute to fund distinguished academics based overseas to spend time there to enhance the skills of academic staff and student body. He was nominated to contribute to the research and teaching mission of the institute in the areas of urban education, curriculum and history of education.

 

“This is a very prestigious award and it reflects well on Dr. Franklin’s expertise and ability to offer skills to the University of London, which is one of the leading institutions of educational research worldwide,” said Martha Dever, associate dean of the Emma Eccles Jones College of Education and Human Services and department head of the School of Teacher Education and Leadership at USU. “The award also reflects well on our own School of Teacher Education and Leadership; it shows that our professors are among the leading voices in the world on educational issues.”

 

Franklin will deliver four public Leverhulme lectures to the institution about the overall topic of urban educational reform in a globalized world. The four lectures cover the role of history and comparative studies in research on urban education; the state of the comprehensive high school; educational partnerships; and small school reform. 

 

He will also pursue his own research, which is on the theme of reforming schools to respond to the demands of globalization. The research involves a study of two recent initiatives in UK school reform: an effort at Bishops Park College to reorganize a high school in a disadvantaged area of the UK into a number of smaller schools-within-schools; Learning Trust, a private nonprofit company responsible for managing the schools in one of London’s most depressed communities.

 

Emma Eccles Jones College of Education and Human Services