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, policy studies, and sociolinguistic methods. The sites for my investigations are typically teacher networks and institutes, schools and education systems, teacher development initiatives, and policy environments within and across countries. 

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