Coburn Wins Walder Award
Cynthia Coburn, he Margaret Walker Alexander Professor of Human Development and Social Policy, received Northwestern University's Martin E. and Gertrude G. Walder Award for Research Excellence.
Coburn, who was inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2025, studies how education policies affect what teachers actually do in urban classrooms, how school districts make decisions, and how research influences those decisions.
Coburn is the fourth School of Education and Social Policy faculty member to win the award, since it was established in 2002 by alumnus Joseph A. Walder and given annually by the provost. Previous winners include professors Kirabo Jackson (2018), Carol Lee (2008) and professor emerita Lindsay Chase-Lansdale (2004).
“Cynthia is, without hyperbole, the foremost scholar of research design in education on the planet — and her work has fundamentally reshaped how researchers, practitioners, and policymakers think about educational reform," said SESP Dean Bryan Brayboy. “Her ideas are original and rigorous, her influence reaches across disciplines and borders, and her commitment to the hard work of connecting knowledge to practice has made a lasting difference.”
Coburn is currently serving on the National Academy of Education Presidential Task Force on Knowledge Mobilization, which is looking at how to better get research findings into the hands of the people who need them and make sure those findings lead to real change.
In addition to her current research — she has five articles under review — Coburn serves on the Board of Visitors for the Learning Research and Development Center at the University of Pittsburgh.
It is a meaningful position, as her first faculty appointment was split between the prestigious research institute and the educational leadership program at the University of Pittsburgh's School of Education. “It's very cool to go back as a senior scholar to the place I started as an assistant professor,” she said.
Coburn also has a new grant from the Heising-Simons Foundation to write up and share findings from two earlier studies on how school districts can improve math instruction for young children, from pre-K through 3rd grade. The work is ambitious — the team has committed to producing four to six research papers plus outreach efforts in California and nationally, all with a small staff managing a large amount of data.
Depth Over Breadth
Coburn’s landmark 2003 article "Rethinking Scale" argued that true educational change is not measured by how many schools adopt a program, but whether that change runs deep, endures, and is owned by the educators themselves.
That conceptual reframing, which was radical at the time, has since become foundational to the field — and it helped spark a renaissance in education research. Her subsequent work on research-practice partnerships, developed with colleague William Penuel, is now a widely adopted framework for how research can be genuinely useful to teachers and administrators.
Coburn said she was both “honored and humbled” to receive the award. “It puts me in the company of amazing and inspirational colleagues from a wide range of disciplines at Northwestern University who have received this award since its founding,” she said.
The Walder Award, which includes a $20,000 stipend, was established by Joseph A. Walder, who earned a master's degree in chemistry from Northwestern in 1972 and an M.D. in 1975. He has also established a permanently endowed professorship at Northwestern, the Irving M. Klotz Research Professorship.