NWP Board of Directors
Judith Warren Little
Board Member since 2010; Member of Governance Committee
Professor and Dean, Graduate School of Education, University of California, Berkeley
Judith Warren Little is Dean and Carol Liu Professor of Education Policy at the Graduate School of Education, University of California, Berkeley. Prior to coming to UC Berkeley in 1987, Dr. Little worked as a Senior Program Director in the Professional Development Studies Program at the Far West Laboratory for Educational Research and Development (now WestEd) in San Francisco, California.
Dr. Little's research interests center on the organizational and policy contexts of teaching and teacher education. Her earliest work established how certain kinds of professional relationships among teachers—their "norms of collegiality and experimentation"—created conditions conducive to school success and schools' adaptability to change. In subsequent research, she delved more fully into the nature of teachers' professional community and its relationship to teacher learning and school reform. In recent years, she has also investigated national and international developments in the composition, quality, distribution, and preparation of the teacher workforce. Dr. Little has published numerous papers and two books in the areas of teachers' work, school reform, and teacher policy.
Dr. Little is an elected member of the National Academy of Education and a Fellow of the American Educational Research Association. She has also received the Frank H. Klassen Award for scholarly contributions and leadership in teacher education from the International Council on Education for Teaching. She serves as an advisor to foundations, government agencies, professional associations, university programs, and local education authorities in the United States and elsewhere.
She received her BA and a teaching credential in English from the University of Colorado in 1968, and completed her PhD in sociology there in 1978.
