Cynthia Coburn

Cynthia Coburn is Professor at the School of Education and Social Policy at Northwestern University. Dr. Coburn studies the relationship between instructional policy and teachers’ classroom practices in urban schools, the dynamics of school district policy making, and the relationship between research and practice for school improvement. She has won numerous awards for her scholarship, including the American Educational Research Association Early Career Award (2011), election as a Fellow of the American Educational Research Association (2015), an honorary doctorate (Doctor Honoris Causa) from CU Louvain in Belgium (2019), election to the National Academy of Education (2020), and Northwestern University’s Ver Steeg Distinguished Research Fellowship (2020) and McCormick Professorship of Teaching Excellence (2021). She is a member of the California Collaborative for District Reform, the DREME Network investigating coherence of early mathematics instruction, and the National Academy of Sciences Medicine and Engineering Standing Committee on Scientific Communication. Dr. Coburn has a BA in philosophy from Oberlin College, and a MA in Sociology and a PhD in Education from Stanford University.