Creating Productive Cultures in Schools

Leading Researcher Joseph Murphy and his colleague Daniela Torre shed light on two critical issues in education today: student underachievement and how to build effective, high-performing schools. Murphy draws from considerable research and scholarship in the area of school reform. This research is based on meaningful links with the worlds of practice and policy, and builds upon our most robust understanding about school improvement. The book examines the historical footings of the American public school to expose the economic, political, social, and cultural currents that have shaped and continue to influence our understanding of public education and underachievement.

Joseph F. Murphy is the Frank W. Mayborn Chair and associate dean at Peabody College of Education at Vanderbilt University. He has also been a faculty member at the University of Illinois and The Ohio State University, where he was the William Ray Flesher Professor of Education.

In the public schools, he has served as an administrator at the school, district, and state levels, including an appointment as the executive assistant to the chief deputy superintendent of public instruction in California. His most recent appointment was as the founding president of the Ohio Principals Leadership Academy. At the university level, he has served as department chair and associate dean.

He is past vice president of the American Educational Research Association and was the founding chair of the Interstate School Leaders Licensure Consortium (ISLLC). He is co-editor of the AERA Handbook on Educational Administration (1999) and editor of the National Society for the Study of Education (NSSE) yearbook, The Educational Leadership Challenge (2002).

His work is in the area of school improvement, with special emphasis on leadership and policy. He has authored or co-authored 18 books in this area and edited another 12. His most recent authored volumes include Understanding and Assessing the Charter School Movement (2002), Leadership for Literacy: Research-Based Practice, PreK-3 (2003), Connecting Teacher Leadership and School Improvement (2005), Preparing School Leaders: Defining a Research and Action Agenda (2006), and Turning Around Failing Schools: Lessons From the Organizational Sciences.

Daniela Torre is currently pursuing her Ph.D. in Education Policy at Vanderbilt University. Her research interests include school improvement, particularly for English learners and at-risk students.  Previously she taught for five years as an elementary school teacher in both traditional public and charter schools. She earned her B.A. from Washington University in St. Louis and her M.A. in Teaching English to Students of Other Languages from American University in Washington, D.C.