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2020 RHSU Edu-Scholar Public Influence: Top Tens

By Rick Hess — January 09, 2020 2 min read
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Yesterday, we unveiled the 2020 RHSU Edu-Scholar Public Influence Rankings. Of course, over the years, readers also wanted to see 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 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 invaluable research assistants (RJ Martin, Matt Rice, and Hannah Warren) worked off of 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. So, 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, or click the link below each one to view it in a separate window.

Curriculum, Instruction, and Administration

top10 curriculum

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Economics

top10 economics

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Government and Policy

top10 government

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Psychology

top10 psychology

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Sociology

top10 sociology

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Junior Faculty

top4 junior

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The tables pretty much speak for themselves. The top finisher in Curriculum, Instruction, and Administration was Linda Darling-Hammond; in Economics, Raj Chetty; in Government and Policy, Gary Orfield; in Psychology, Carol Dweck; and, in Sociology, Pedro Noguera.

Beyond the disciplinary breakdowns, I also want to give a special nod to junior faculty who made the list. Given that the rankings, by design, favor scholars who’ve built bodies of work and had a sustained impact, the junior faculty who fare well deserve particular notice. (Indeed, readers will note that the list of junior faculty only includes four names.) Harvard’s Anthony Jack topped the junior faculty chart this year, coming in 140th overall. The other junior faculty to make the Edu-Scholar 200 were University of Massachusetts-Lowell’s Jack Schneider, North Carolina State’s Anna Egalite, and Harvard’s Eric Taylor.

Well, that wraps up the 2020 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.

The opinions expressed in Rick Hess Straight Up are strictly those of the author(s) and do not reflect the opinions or endorsement of Editorial Projects in Education, or any of its publications.