Dr. Anderson joined Pitt faculty in Fall of 2020, after earning her PhD at Northwestern University and serving as a postdoc with the National Center for Research in Policy and Practice. Prior to graduate school, Dr. Anderson was inspired to pursue her current path by her experiences working at youth-serving non-profits in her hometown of New York City. Her frustration with the lack of accessible, trustworthy, relevant information available to practitioners sparked an interest in the complex relationship between research and practice.
Dr. Anderson’s research is motivated by a perennial problem of practice: how to make promising equity-oriented educational practices “stick.” She addresses this question from multiple perspectives, drawing on conceptual tools from the learning sciences, policy implementation, and organization science–especially institutional theory. Using fieldwork, qualitative content analysis, and inferential statistics, she seeks to understand the current dynamics in K-12 schools (characterized both by constant change and limited transformation), in terms of structures and processes operating at multiple levels from individual teacher learning to federal legislation. She also uses design-based implementation research methods to collaborate with educational stakeholders seeking to implement equity-focused initiatives more sustainably.
She has a special focus on the implementation of restorative justice practices in urban public schools.
Research-Practice Partnerships (PhD, MA)
Policy Implementation (PhD, MA)
First Year Seminar (PhD)
Organizational Perspectives on Educational Improvement (PhD)
Organizations, Networks, and Policy (EdD)
Implementation & institutionalization
Research-practice partnerships
Restorative justice practices
Teacher learning
Anderson, E.R. & Colyvas, J.A. (2021) What Sticks and Why? A MoRe Institutional Framework for Education Research. Teachers College Record 123(7).
McCambly, H. & Anderson, E.R. (2020) Moving the Needle or Spinning Our Wheels? A Framework for Long-Lasting, Equitable Change in Education. The Foundation Review. 12(3), 32-46.
Penuel, W.R., Farrell, C.C., Anderson, E.R., Coburn, C.E., Allen, A-R., Bohannon, A.X., Hopkins, M., Brown, S. A. (2020) A Comparative, Descriptive Study of Three Research–Practice Partnerships: Goals, Activities, and Influence on District Policy, Practice, and Decision Making. Boulder, CO: National Center for Research in Policy and Practice.
Anderson, E.R., Gupta, A., Philip, T.M., Markauskaite, L., Kali, Y. Goodyear, P., Hjorth, A. and Olivia Levrini (2018). Knowledge Analysis Outside the STEM Classroom. In Kay, J. and Luckin, R. (Eds.) Rethinking Learning in the Digital Age: Making the Learning Sciences Count, 13th International Conference of the Learning Sciences (ICLS) 2018, Volume 2. London, UK: International Society of the Learning Sciences.
Anderson, E.R. (2017). Accommodating Change: Relating Fidelity of Implementation to Program Fit in Educational Reforms. American Educational Research Journal. 54(6), 1288-1315.
Research Participant: Shifting Power https://remakelearning.org/shifting-power/
Committee Member: Community Engaged Scholarship Forum https://www.cesf.pitt.edu
