Dean Bob Pianta
Bob Pianta
Dean, Curry School of Education
Novartis Professor of Education
Director, Center for Advanced Study of Teaching and Learning
Curriculum Vitae
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Bob Pianta is the Dean of the Curry School of Education at the University of Virginia, as well as the Novartis US Foundation Professor of Education and a Professor in the Department of Psychology. He serves as Director of the National Center for Research in Early Childhood Education and the Center for Advanced Study of Teaching and Learning. Dr. Pianta’s work focuses on policy and practice that enhance children’s outcomes, school readiness, and later achievement. His recent work focuses on the assessment of teacher quality, teacher-child interaction, and child improvement, using standardized observational assessment and video feedback. Dr. Pianta has published more than 300 scholarly papers and is lead author on several influential books related to early childhood and elementary education. He has recently begun work to extend his work into design and delivery of professional development using web-based formats and interactive video. Dr. Pianta received a B.S. and a M.A. in Special Education from the University of Connecticut, and a Ph.D. in Psychology from the University of Minnesota, and began his career as a special education teacher.
In The News
Dean Pianta's work with the Classroom Assessment Scoring System featured on the Early Ed Watch Blog.
Book Series Launches with a Look at Early Childhood Education
June 19, 2009 — A national center at the University of Virginia's Curry School of Education has launched a book series focusing on the latest early childhood education research. The series is co-edited by Robert Pianta, dean of the Curry School and director of the National Center for Research on Early Childhood Education, which is housed at the Curry School's Center for Advanced Study of Teaching and Learning; and by Carollee Howes, director of the Center for Improving Child Care Quality and professor of education at University of California-Los Angeles.
Dean Pianta Interviewed by ReadingRockets.org
Curry Study Finds Teacher Quality Lacking in Most First-Grade Classrooms
February 19, 2009 — Most American first-grade classrooms are pretty happy places to be. Children smile and enjoy working with one another and have positive interactions with their teachers, who recognize their students' cues for help and offer timely responses. But that doesn't mean that all of the students are getting the academic content they need, according to a new study being published by two University of Virginia researchers in the March issue of The Elementary School Journal.
Robert Pianta, dean of the University of Virginia's Curry School of Education and director of its Center for Advanced Study of Teaching and Learning, and Megan Stuhlman, a senior research scientist at CASTL, used data collected from direct observations of 820 first-grade classrooms in nearly 700 private and public schools in 32 states, assessing the social and instructional quality of interactions between teachers and students. The quality of these interactions are determined by specially trained raterswho make judgments about the kind of interaction and the frequency based on scoring guidelines. (For example, a teacher ignoring a student with a question would score low on "sensitivity," while a teacher who responds quickly would score high.) More.
Daily Progress article.
Dean Pianta Featured in a Malcolm Gladwell article in The New Yorker
December 8, 2008--Whether its football or teaching, how does one predict the performance of a potential employee? In his article “Most Likely to Succeed” The New Yorker journalist Malcolm Gladwell speaks with Robert Pianta, Dean of the Curry School of Education at the University of Virginia about his research in identifying the characteristics of high-quality teachers. What is it that these teachers do in the classrooms, how do they engage the students that makes them much more successful teachers and their students more successful learners?
http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2008/12/15/081215fa_fact_gladwell?currentPage=all
Articles
Dean's Message: August 2009
Op-Ed: Getting Real About Teaching
This Op-Ed by Dean Pianta was printed in the Monday, July 13, 2009 edition of the Virginian Pilot.
July 13, 2009--Arne Duncan, the tough, former chief executive of Chicago's schools who is now secretary of education, is on a mission to put teeth into teacher performance assessments. Recent research from the New Teacher Project, which surveyed 16,000 educators in four states, notes the preponderance of those who said they know teachers who should be fired. The report emphasizes the need for measures that can discriminate between poor performers and high performers so that the former can be fired and the latter rewarded. But that gets at only half the problem. More.
Dean Pianta Asked to Advise President-Elect Obama’s Transition Team
Dean Pianta's recommendations pertaining largely to early childhood education, child care and k-12 policies. His article begins below.
The issues as I see them, for early childhood, are a) expanding the current system of services to the set of children and families most likely to benefit from them; b) ensuring the quality and effectiveness of early education and child care programs that receive public funding; c) aligning the early education system with the early years of k-12 to ensure efficiency and increase effectiveness of these assets. In my recommendations I focus primarily on programs that reach children starting at about age 2 and, although they may be privately-run or even family-based, programs that could receive public funds in some form.