CIED Alumni

Allyson Krupar graduated with a dual-title in Lifelong Learning and Comparative and International Education in 2017. She serves as the Senior Specialist in Learning Research focused on Education in Emergencies at Save the Children US where she manages and provides technical support on practitioner-led research in education in low-resource environments worldwide. During her graduate study, she began teaching methods, monitoring and evaluation at American University in the International Development Concentration of the IR Online Master’s program at the School of International Service and in the School of Professional and Extended Studies where she continues to teach online courses. Her work focuses on education for those affected by violent conflict, forced migration and displacement, specifically for over-age learners in non-formal learning environments. She designs and supports research projects using both qualitative and quantitative methods to engage scholar-practitioners in research, monitoring and evaluation of educational programming and design. Her collaborative peer-reviewed publications draw on qualitative and quantitative research methods and have appeared in Adult Education Quarterly, Global Education Review, Forced Migration Review, and the International Journal of Lifelong Education

Dr. Motoko Akiba is a Professor and the Chair of the Department of Educational Leadership & Policy Studies. Her areas of research expertise are teacher policy and reform, teacher professional development, and comparative education policy. Dr. Akiba received her B.A. from the University of Tsukuba, Japan, and a dual-title Ph.D. in “Educational Theory & Policy” and “Comparative & International Education” from Pennsylvania State University-University Park in 2001. She also worked as a post-doc on a Lesson Study project at Mills College and a senior researcher at Mid-continent Research for Education and Learning (McREL) prior to taking a faculty position. Dr. Akiba joined Florida State University in 2012.

She published a book, Improving Teacher Quality: The U.S. Teaching Force in Global Context (Teachers College Press, 2009) and edited three books: Teacher Reforms Around the World (Emerald Books, 2013), The Global and the Local: Diverse Perspectives in Comparative Education (Sense Publishers, 2016), and International Handbook of Teacher Quality and Policy (Routledge/Taylor & Francis, 2018). Her articles appear in journals including Educational Researcher, American Educational Research Journal, Education Policy, Educational Policy Analysis Archives, Teachers College Record, Comparative Education Review, and Compare on teacher policy topics such as professional development, compensation, and performance-related pay, and multicultural teacher education.

Her research program has been funded by the National Science Foundation, U.S. Department of Education, and AERA Grant Program. She is also a recipient of the NSF early career award grant.

She received her Ph.D. in Educational Theory and Policy and Comparative and International Education (dual-title degree) in 2018. Currently, she is a Postdoctoral Fellow with the Donia Human Rights Center at the University of Michigan. In August 2020, she started as an Assistant Professor of Leadership Studies at the Jepson School of Leadership Studies at the University of Richmond. Broadly defined, her research examines what drives educational inequality in the United States and cross-nationally. One strand of this research addresses how the educational policies and characteristics of immigrant and minority students’ communities affect their educational outcomes. As part of this research, she has examined the effects of anti-immigrant sentiment on the educational outcomes of immigrant students. Her current work extends this research by examining how marginalized students are affected by other contextual factors, such as immigration policies and campus climate. More information about my research can be found at http://volhachykina.org/.

Ramazan Gungor, Ph.D. (Adult Education & Comparative and International Education, 2015) is an assistant dean at the School of Graduate Studies (SGS) at Rutgers University. He is responsible for administration, development, dissemination, coordination and assessment of professional development and cross-disciplinary activities for the entire graduate community at the SGS. He also manages collaborations and partnerships with individual graduate programs and with internally and externally funded programs.

Before accepting a position at Rutgers, he was a post-doctoral scholar within the Department of Learning and Performance Systems at Penn State, University Park (UP). The post-doctoral position was a collaboration between Penn State World Campus & Continuing Education and College of Education and was formed to investigate the potential influence of institutional scholarships on student retention for distance education students. He has previously studied distance education in different contexts including its use for adult basic education programs.

He received his BA in Foreign Language Education (Applied Linguistics) and MA in Adult Education in Istanbul, Turkey at Bogazici University. He completed his doctoral studies with a dual title in Adult Education & Comparative and International Education at Penn State, UP. He taught K12 and college levels (teacher of English as a Foreign Language) in Istanbul, Turkey. Working with adults at private language schools led him to change his focus from Applied Linguistics to Adult Education. His research has mainly focused on distance education, adult literacy, social support, and state and federal level policy analysis in adult education.

Pablo Fraser is an educational policy analyst for the TALIS 2018 (Teaching and Learning International Survey) project at the OECD. His research interests consist of the exploration, identification and description of current global trends in the development of quality educational policies. He has been involved in comparative and international research concerning teachers' professional development, teaching practices, and teachers' well-being. During his time at the OECD, Pablo managed the production of TALIS 2018 Results (Volume II): Teachers and School Leaders as Valued Professionals and was responsible for the OECD’s conceptual framework on teachers’ well-being. Pablo has a Ph.D. with a dual-title in Educational Theory & Policy and in International and Comparative Politics in Education from Pennsylvania State University.

Dr. Alexander W. Wiseman graduated with a PhD (2001), Educational Theory and Policy/Comparative and International Education (dual degree), Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA. He has more than 25 years of professional experience working with government education departments, university-based teacher education programs, community-based professional development for teachers, and as a classroom teacher in both the U.S. and East Asia. Dr. Wiseman examines and informs educational policy development, leads strategic planning workshops, provides evidence-based training programs, speaks internationally and presents extensively in the areas of evidence-based decision-making, teacher preparation and professional development, strategic planning, system assessment and reform, education policy, change management, equitable educational access for girls and boys, institutional capacity building, school-to-work transition, and civic education. Dr. Wiseman's research uses large-scale education datasets on math and science education, information and communication technology (ICT), teacher preparation, professional development and curriculum as well as school principal's instructional leadership activity. He serves on the editorial board of Educational Administration Quarterly and Educational Researcher and is the author or editor of more than 100 articles, chapters, and books. He is the series editor of the volume series, International Perspectives on Education and Society, and the senior editor of the journal, FIRE: Forum for International Research in Education.

Having joined the School of Education and Social Work in November 2014, Professor Gillian Hampden-Thompson became the Head of School in 2016. Having both a background in research and teaching, Gillian was previously the Director of Research in the Department of Education at the University of York (2008-2014) and a research analyst and project leader at the American Institutes for Research in Washington, DC (2004-2008). Prior to embarking on her graduate studies, she was a secondary school teacher in the UK. Working across a broad range of educational projects, her research broadly addresses issues surrounding social justice. Gillian applies a range of methods and approaches in her research including working on projects that involve quantitative analyses of large-scale data, randomized control trials, and process evaluations. Gillian holds three degrees in the field of Education, including a Ph.D. in Educational Theory and Policy, and Comparative and International Education (dual title degree) from the Pennsylvania State University, USA.

Kristina Brezicha graduated from EDTHP in December of 2015 with a dual-title Ph.D. from The Pennsylvania State University in Educational Theory and Policy and Comparative International Education. In January of 2016, she became an assistant professor of Educational Leadership in the department of Educational Policy Studies at Georgia State University. Her research centers on the relationship between education and democracy and how this relationship manifests in schools. She has published in Educational Administration Quarterly, Peabody Journal of Education, and The Journal of School Leadership among others.