John I. Goodlad, 2002 Laureate

John I. Goodlad was awarded the first Brock International Prize in Education at the 2002 Brock Symposium on Excellence in Education at The University of Oklahoma on July 9-11, 2002. Goodlad received a $40,000 cash prize, a bronze bust of Sequoia, the only person known to have invented an alphabet, and a certificate.

Goodlad is president of the Institute for Educational Inquiry and a founder of the Center for Educational Renewal at the University of Washington in Seattle. Goodlad is no stranger to education reform. For the past 25 years, he has been involved in an array of reform programs, large-scale studies of educational change, school improvement, and teacher training. The National Network for Educational Renewal was created to further the simultaneous renewal of schooling and the education of educators.

Goodlad has held professorships at Agnes Scott College and Emory University in Georgia, the University of Chicago, and UCLA (where he was dean of the Graduate School of Education from 1967 to 1983) before coming to the University of Washington in 1984. He earned his doctorate degree from the University of Chicago and holds honorary degrees from 20 universities in the United States and Canada.

He is the author of more than 30 books on education, including the highly acclaimed A Place Called School (McGraw-Hill, 1984), Teachers for Our Nation’s Schools (Jossey-Bass, 1990), and In Praise of Education (Teachers College Press, 1997). Goodlad has received numerous awards in recognition of his work, including the prestigious Harold T. McGraw Prize in Education in 1999 and the James B. Conant Award of the Education Commission of the States in 2000.

In addition to advancing a comprehensive program of research and development directed to the simultaneous renewal of schooling and teacher education, Goodlad is inquiring into the mission of education in a democratic society to which such renewal must be directed. In his most recent book, In Praise of Education, Goodlad argues that education is an inalienable right in a democratic society, and he engages the reader in a conversation on the purpose of education: to develop individual and collective democratic character.