Research

Brad Olsen on his research: 

"During 2000-2020, my research mostly investigated teachers, teaching, school reform, and education policy-- not as separate domains but as a complex tangle of practices, contexts, forces, and systems. As someone studying education through the lens of teachers, I was interested in better understanding how teachers and other educators combine prior and present experiences, knowledge, contexts, and their professional preparation as they continually construct new understandings, practices, and career shapes within and across various contexts of practice. 

This ecological view of education informs my research still. I conduct mostly qualitative research and some mixed-methods work at the convergence of interactionist analyses, policy studies, and social/linguistic methods. The sites for my investigations are typically teacher and teacher development networks, programs, and institutes; schools and whole education systems; and policy spaces within and across countries around the world. 

Since the COVID-19 pandemic, I've been focused on global education governance and development; teachers, teaching, and teacher development in the contemporary international policy climate; and how to scale impact of educational innovations in low- and middle-income countries around the world. And I continue to play around with complexity theory and systems thinking to investigate the knotty landscape of transforming whole education ecosystems in this current time."