Patrick McQuillan

associate professor

Campion Hall
Room 215

617.552.0676

EDUCATION

Ph.D., Brown University

EXPERTISE/INTERESTS

School reform, impact of concentrated poverty on educational achievement, student empowerment, anthropology and education.

HONORS/PUBLICATIONS/PROFESSIONAL ACTIVITIES

Research and Evaluation

2004-present

2003-present

1997-present

Working with students, faculty, and administrators at Brighton High School in Boston, MA to help them transform the school into three "small learning communities

Co-PI for the Qualitative Case Studies Project as part of the Teachers for a New Era initiative in the Lynch School of Education at Boston College.

Conducting “action research” at Manual High School in Denver, Colo., to assist faculty and administrators in their efforts to restructure the school in terms of classroom instruction, assessment, and site-based management.

1986-93

Co-Director, School Ethnography Project, Coalition of Essential Schools, Brown University. Designed and conducted an ethnographic study of schools and Central Staff members of this national reform effort. Research focused on the planning and implementation of educational reform, and documenting change and resistance to change in secondary schools.

Peer-Reviewed Books

McQuillan, P.J. (forthcoming). Understanding Small-School Reform Through the Lens of Complexity Theory: It's "Good to Think With." Teachers College Record

McQuillan, P.J. (1998). Educational Opportunity in an Urban American High School: A Cultural Analysis. Albany: SUNY Press, 243 pp.

Muncey, D.E. & McQuillan, P.J. (1996). Reform and Resistance in Schools and Classrooms: An Ethnographic View of the Coalition of Essential Schools. New Haven: Yale University Press, 319 pp.

Journal Articles

McQuillan, P.J. (2005). Pitfalls and Possibilities: A Comparative Analysis of Student Empowerment. American Educational Research Journal, 42(4), 639-670

McQuillan, P.J. & Englert, K.S. (2001). The Return to Neighborhood Schools, Concentrated Poverty, and Educational Opportunity: An Agenda for Reform. Hastings Constitutional Law Quarterly, 28 (4): 739-770.

McQuillan, P.J. (2001). The Assumptions of School Accountability: A Challenge to Prevailing Wisdom from an Urban High School. Journal of Research in Education, 11 (1): 1-9.

McQuillan, P.J. (1997). Humanizing the Comprehensive High School. Educational Administration Quarterly 33: 644-682.

Muncey, D.E. & McQuillan, P.J. (1993). Preliminary Findings From a Five-Year Study of the Coalition of Essential Schools. Phi Delta Kappan, 74 (6): 486-489.

Muncey, D.E. & McQuillan, P.J. (1993). Educational Reform as Religious Revitalization. American Journal of Education, 101 (4): 393-431.

Chapters in Edited Collections
McQuillan, P.J. (1999). Culture in Conflict: Rugged Individualism and Educational Opportunity in a Diverse Society. In L. Naylor (Ed.), Problems and Issues of Diversity in the United States. Westport, CT: Bergin & Garvey, pp. 161-183.

House, E.R. & McQuillan, P.J. (1997). Three Perspectives on School Reform. In A. Lieberman (Ed.), International Handbook of Educational Change: Roots of Educational Change. Dordrecht, Netherlands: Kluwer Academic Publishers.