Yesterday, we unveiled the 2023 Edu-Scholar Public Influence Rankings. Of course, over the years, readers have also expressed an interest in how scholars fared when it came to particular fields of study. After all, education research includes a lot of people doing very different kinds of work. Consequently, where scholars rank overall may be less telling than where they rank within their field. Today, we’ll report on the top 10 finishers for five disciplinary categories, as well as the top five junior faculty. (For a detailed discussion of how the scoring was done, see Tuesday’s post.)
Now, there can be ambiguity when it comes to determining a given scholar’s discipline. For the most part, my eagle-eyed research assistants Alicia Nottrott and Caitlyn Aversman work off CVs, relying primarily on a scholar’s earned degree. In the handful of cases where that didn’t do the trick, I made a judgment call. If you think I’ve made the wrong call on someone, just let me know, and we’ll do our best to make appropriate adjustments next year.
You can scroll through each chart below.
The tables pretty much speak for themselves. The top finisher in Curriculum, Instruction, and Administration was Jo Boaler; in Economics, Emily Oster; in Government and Policy, Paul Peterson; in Psychology, Angela Duckworth (Full disclosure: Angela Duckworth blogs for Education Week); and, in Sociology, Pedro Noguera (Full disclosure: Noguera and I co-authored A Search for Common Ground in 2021 and just wrapped up our “Common Ground” podcast this fall).
Beyond the disciplinary breakdowns, I also want to give a special nod to junior faculty who made the list. Harvard’s Anthony Jack topped the junior faculty chart this year, coming in 142nd overall. The other junior faculty to make the Edu-Scholar 200 were Harvard’s Jarvis Givens, at 172, University of Arkansas’ Jonathan Wai, at 181, Brown’s Jonathan Collins, at 194, UT Austin’s Denisa Gandara, at 195, and Harvard’s Bianca Baldridge, at 198. Given that the exercise, by design, favors scholars who’ve built bodies of work and had a sustained impact, these six are deserving of particular notice.
Well, that wraps up the 2023 Edu-Scholar Rankings. We’ll do this all again next year, same time, same place. Next week, we’ll return to our regularly scheduled programming.
Frederick Hess is director of education policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute and an executive editor of Education Next.
This post originally appeared on Rick Hess Straight Up.
