Deborah Loewenberg Ball
Deborah Loewenberg Ball is the Jessie Jean Storey-Fry Distinguished University Professor; Arthur F. Thurnau Professor; Research Professor at the Institute for Social Research; and Director of TeachingWorks. She taught elementary school for more than 15 years, and continues to teach children every summer.
Ball’s research focuses on the practice of teaching, using elementary mathematics as a critical context for investigating the challenges of building relationships with children and helping children develop agency and understanding, and on leveraging the power of teaching to disrupt racism, marginalization, and inequity.
Ball is an expert on teacher education, and her current work centers on ways to improve the quality of beginning teaching to advance justice. Ball has authored more than 150 publications and has lectured and made major presentations around the world. She has also developed distinctive collections of video records of practice that are broadly used to make practice visible. Her research has been recognized with several awards and honors, and she has served on national and international commissions and panels focused on the improvement of education.
She served as president of the American Educational Research Association from 2017 to 2018, as a member of the National Science Board from 2013 to 2018, and as dean of the University of Michigan Marsal Family School of Education from 2005 to 2016. Ball has been elected to the National Ƶ of Education, and is a fellow of the American Mathematical Society and the American Educational Research Association. She was elected a Fellow of the Ƶ in 2014 and serves on its Education program committee. She is currently a member of the Ƶ’s Higher Education Forum and was earlier a member of Commission on the Future of Undergraduate Education, taking part in the public launch in 2017 of its publication, “The Future of Undergraduate Education, The Future of America” in Washington, D.C. She also served as a member of the Education (Class III, Section 7) Section Panel.