Lee Shulman

{{Short description|American educational psychologist (1938–2024)}}

{{Infobox academic

| name = Lee S. Shulman

| birth_date = {{birth date|1938|09|28}}

| alma_mater = The University of Chicago

| doctoral_students = Sam Wineburg

| workplaces = Michigan State University

Stanford Graduate School of Education

Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching

| awards = E. L. Thorndike Award {{small|(1995)}}

| birth_place = Chicago, Illinois, U.S.

| discipline = Education

| spouse = Judy (Horwitz) Shulman

| children = 3

| death_date = December 30, 2024 (aged 86)

}}

Lee S. Shulman (September 28, 1938 – December 30, 2024) was an American educational psychologist and reformer. He has made notable contributions to the study of teaching; assessment of teaching; education in the fields of medicine, science, and mathematics; and the scholarship of teaching and learning.

Background

Shulman was born on September 28, 1938, in Chicago, Illinois.{{Cite web |last=Bowman |first=Connie Louise |title=Lee S. Shulman {{!}} American educational psychologist |url=https://www.britannica.com/biography/Lee-S-Shulman |access-date=2022-02-28 |website=Encyclopaedia Britannica |language=en}} He was the only son of Jewish immigrants who owned a small delicatessen on the Northwest Side of Chicago.{{Cite web |last=Shulman |first=Lee |date=2007-01-01 |title=Just Like Pastrami |url=https://thisibelieve.org/essay/22195/ |access-date=2022-02-28 |website=This I Believe}} He attended a Yeshiva high school{{Cite book |last1=Grossman |first1=Pam |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=zw8zDAAAQBAJ |title=Routledge Encyclopaedia of Educational Thinkers |last2=Wineburg |first2=Sam |publisher=Routledge |year=2016 |isbn=978-1-317-57698-3 |editor-last=Palmer Cooper |editor-first=Joy A. |pages=563 |language=en}} and married Judy Horwitz in 1960.{{Cite web |title=Judy Shulman Obituary (1941 - 2021) |url=https://www.legacy.com/us/obituaries/sfgate/name/judy-shulman-obituary?id=7091857 |access-date=2024-11-29 |website=San Francisco Chronicle, Legacy}} He completed his bachelors (1959), masters (1960), and PhD (1963) at the University of Chicago, where Joseph Schwab and Benjamin Bloom were among the faculty who influenced his thinking and research interests.{{Cite web |date=2008 |title=Alumni Award Winners 2008 |url=http://magazine.uchicago.edu/0878/peer_review/alumni_awards.shtml |access-date=2024-11-29 |website=The University of Chicago Magazine}}{{Cite book |last1=Baptiste |first1=H. Prentice |title=The Palgrave Handbook of Educational Thinkers |last2=Leck |first2=Mika C. |date=2022 |editor-last=Geier |editor-first=Brett A. |pages=1831–1840 |language=en |chapter=Lee S. Shulman: An Icon of Teaching}}

Career

From 1963 to 1982, Shulman was a professor of educational psychology and medical education at Michigan State University, where he and Judith Lanier co-founded and co-directed the Institute for Research on Teaching.{{Cite web |date=Spring 2002 |title=IRT Helps Shape Direction of College |url=https://www.educ.msu.edu/neweducator/spring02/IRT.htm |access-date=2024-11-27 |website=New Educator, College of Education, Michigan State University}}{{Cite web |date=Spring 2001 |title=Lee Shuman Champions the Cause of Understanding Teachers and Their Learning |url=https://www.educ.msu.edu/neweducator/spring01/shuman.htm |access-date=2024-11-29 |website=New Educator, College of Education, Michigan State University}} He then became a professor at the Stanford Graduate School of Education, where he held the Charles E. Ducommun chair until 1997. He left Stanford to become the president of the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, serving there until 2008.{{Cite web |date=1996-10-22 |title=Stanford Professor Lee Shulman to head Carnegie Foundation |url=https://news-archive.stanford.edu/pr/96/961022shulman.html |access-date=2024-11-27 |website=Stanford University News Service}}{{Cite web |title=Carnegie Foundation Archive - Lee S. Shulman |url=http://archive.carnegiefoundation.org/resources/shulman.html |access-date=2024-11-27 |website=Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching |language=en}} He was a past president of the American Educational Research Association (AERA).{{Cite web |date=2024 |title=AERA Past Presidents |url=https://www.aera.net/About-AERA/Who-We-Are/AERA-Past-Presidents |access-date=2024-11-27 |website=American Educational Research Association}} He was an emeritus member of the National Academy of Education, where he also served as vice president and president, and was a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the American Association for the Advancement of Science.{{Cite web |title=Lee Shulman |url=https://naeducation.org/member/lee-shulman/ |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20241203205916/https://naeducation.org/member/lee-shulman/ |archive-date=2024-12-03 |access-date=2024-11-27 |website=National Academy of Education |language=en-US}}{{Cite web |date=2024-10-03 |title=Lee S. Shulman |url=https://www.amacad.org/person/lee-s-shulman |access-date=2024-11-27 |website=American Academy of Arts and Sciences |language=en}}

Shulman received numerous awards recognizing his educational research, including a Guggenheim Fellowship (1972);{{Cite web |title=Lee S. Shulman – John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation… |url=https://www.gf.org/fellows/lee-s-shulman/ |access-date=2025-02-09 |language=en}} the AERA's Distinguished Career Award (1995);{{Cite web |date=2024 |title=Awards |url=https://www.aera.net/Division-I/How-We-Do-It/Awards |access-date=2024-11-27 |website=American Educational Research Association |language=en-US}} the American Psychological Association’s E.L. Thorndike Award for Distinguished Psychological Contributions to Education (1995);{{Cite web |date=2023 |title=Career Achievement Award for Distinguished Psychological Contributions to Education |url=https://www.apa.org/about/awards/div-15-thorndike?tab=4 |access-date=2024-11-27 |website=American Psychological Association}} George Washington University's President's Medal (2004);{{Cite web |date=2004-10-20 |title=Graduate School of Education and Human Development Celebrates a Centennial of Leadership |url=https://www2.gwu.edu/~bygeorge/102004/gsehd100.html |access-date=2024-11-30 |website=George Washington University}} the University of Louisville Grawemeyer Award in Education (2006) for his 2004 book, The Wisdom of Practice: Essays on Teaching, Learning and Learning to Teach;{{cite web |date=2005-11-30 |title=2006 - Lee Shulman |url=http://grawemeyer.org/education/previous-winners/2006-lee-shulman.html |url-status=dead |archiveurl=https://web.archive.org/web/20150610202927/http://grawemeyer.org/education/previous-winners/2006-lee-shulman.html |archivedate=2015-06-10 |website=The Grawemeyer Awards}} the Teachers College Medal for Distinguished Service (2007);{{Cite web |date=2007-05-09 |title=Thomas Sobol, Shirley Ann Jackson and Lee Shulman to Speak at Convocation |url=https://www.tc.columbia.edu/articles/2007/may/thomas-sobol-shirley-ann-jackson-and-lee-shulman-to-speak-a/ |access-date=2024-11-29 |website=Teachers College, Columbia University}} and the American Association of Colleges for Teacher Education's Lifetime Achievement Award (2008).{{Cite web |date=2024 |title=AACTE Awards |url=https://aacte.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/2024-Awards-Call-for-Entries-2.pdf |access-date=2024-11-28 |website=American Association of Colleges of Teacher Education|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20231204102017/https://aacte.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/2024-Awards-Call-for-Entries-2.pdf |archive-date=4 December 2023 }} In 2018, he was awarded an honorary doctorate by the University of Haifa.{{Cite web |date=2018-06-05 |title=Lee Shulman, Doctor of Philosophy, Honoris Causa |url=https://bog.haifa.ac.il/images/bog2018/Shulman_eng.pdf |access-date=2024-11-30 |website=University of Haifa}}

Shulman was also recognized for his publications and speeches about the higher education field of the scholarship of teaching and learning (SoTL). He notably distinguished SoTL from scholarly teaching, which he described as the work "every one of us should be engaged in every day that we are in a classroom, in our office with students, tutoring, lecturing, conducting discussions, all the roles we play pedagogically."{{Cite book |last=Shulman |first=Lee S. |title=Teaching as community property: Essays on higher education |date=2004 |publisher=Jossey-Bass |isbn=978-0-470-62308-4 |edition=1 |series=Jossey-Bass/Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching |location=San Francisco}} SoTL, on the other hand, is "when we step back and reflect systematically on the teaching we have done, in a form that can be publicly reviewed and built upon by our peers." This emphasis on public review and developing a collective body of knowledge was tied to his larger point that SoTL removes the widespread experience of "pedagogical solitude" by relocating postsecondary teaching within "a community of scholars." This, in turn, will elevate the status of teaching in higher education and expand what's known about teaching and learning in higher education. Shulman died on December 30, 2024, at the age of 86.{{Cite web |title=Lee Shulman Obituary (1938 - 2024) - Legacy Remembers |url=https://www.legacy.com/us/obituaries/legacyremembers/lee-shulman-obituary?id=57142692 |access-date=2025-01-02 |website=Legacy.com}}

Pedagogical content knowledge (PCK)

Shulman introduced the concept of "pedagogical content knowledge". Shulman (1986) claimed that the emphases on teachers' subject matter knowledge and pedagogy were being treated as mutually exclusive. He believed that teacher education programs should combine the two knowledge fields. To address this dichotomy, he introduced the notion of pedagogical content knowledge that includes pedagogical knowledge and content knowledge, among other categories. His initial description of teacher knowledge included curriculum knowledge, and knowledge of educational contexts.

Select publications

Shulman, Lee S. (1986). Those who understand: Knowledge growth in teaching. Educational Researcher, 15(2), 4–14. doi:10.3102/0013189X015002004
Shulman, Lee S. (1987). Knowledge and teaching: Foundations of the new reform. Harvard Educational Review, 57(1), 1–22. doi:10.17763/haer.57.1.j463w79r56455411
Shulman, Lee S. (2004). Teaching as community property: Essays on higher education. Jossey-Bass. {{ISBN|978-0-470-62308-4}}
Shulman, Lee S. (2004). The wisdom of practice: Essays on teaching, learning, and learning to teach. Jossey-Bass. {{ISBN|0787972002}}
Shulman, Lee S. (2005). Signature pedagogies in the professions. Daedalus, 134(3), 52-59. 10.1162/0011526054622015