Cynthia Coburn

Northwestern University

Professor

Cynthia E. Coburn is the Margaret Walker Alexander Professor of Learning Sciences and Human Development and Social Policy at the School of Education and Social Policy, Northwestern University. She studies the relationship between instructional policy and teachers' classroom practices in urban schools, the dynamics of school district policy making, spread and scale of educational innovations, 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), an honorary doctorate (Doctor Honoris Causa) from CU Louvain in Belgium (2019), and Northwestern University’s Ver Steeg Distinguished Research Fellowship (2020) and the Charles Deering McCormick Professorship of Teaching Excellence (2021). She is a Fellow of the American Educational Research Association and an elected member of both the National Academy of Education and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Coburn has a BA in philosophy from Oberlin College, and a MA in Sociology and a PhD in Education from Stanford University.