Gloria Ladson-Billings, leading pedagogical theorist and teacher educator, is elected the next President of the National Academy of Education (NAEd); term will begin Fall 2017.

Known for her groundbreaking work in the fields of Culturally Relevant Pedagogy and Critical Race Theory, Ladson-Billings will succeed Michael Feuer in a four-year term that will begin at the NAEd annual meeting in Fall 2017. The Academy’s President is elected by its membership, who are themselves elected on the basis of outstanding scholarship or contributions to education.

Gloria Ladson-Billings is the Kellner Family Distinguished Professor of Urban Education in the Department of Curriculum and Instruction and faculty affiliate in the Department of Educational Policy Studies at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. She was the 2005-2006 president of the American Educational Research Association. Ladson-Billings’ research examines the pedagogical practices of teachers who are successful with African American students. She also investigates Critical Race Theory applications to education. She is the author of the critically acclaimed books The Dreamkeepers: Successful Teachers of African American Children and Crossing Over to Canaan: The Journey of New Teachers in Diverse Classrooms, and numerous journal articles and book chapters. She is the former editor of the American Educational Research Journal and a member of several editorial boards. Her work has won numerous scholarly awards including the H.I. Romnes Faculty Fellowship, the NAEd/Spencer Postdoctoral Fellowship, and the Palmer O. Johnson outstanding research award. During the 2003-2004 academic year, she was a fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences at Stanford University. In fall of 2004, she received the George and Louise Spindler Award from the Council on Anthropology and Education for significant and ongoing contributions to the field of educational anthropology. She holds honorary degrees from Umeå University (Umeå Sweden), University of Massachusetts-Lowell, and the University of Alicante (Alicante, Spain).