David Hansen, John L. & Sue Ann Weinberg Professor in the Historical & Philosophical Foundations of Education, has been elected a member of the National Academy of Education (NAEd).
As NAEd President Carol Lee stated in announcing the Academy’s 22 new members, including Hansen: “Education, broadly conceived, is foundational to preparing students across ages to navigate the complexities of our democratic experiment in governance, the increased interdependence of our modern world, productive workforce participation, and their personal development as humans. Our distinguished colleagues now joining the National Academy of Education bring the range of expertise and commitments needed for our field to update itself and wrestle with these complexities continuously.”
Founded in 1965 to advance high-quality research to improve education policy and practice, NAEd annually elects U.S. members and international associates for their exceptional scholarship or leadership in education. In addition to contributing to expert study panels on critical educational issues, members actively participate in the Academy’s professional development fellowship programs.
Hansen joined the Teachers College faculty in 2001. His scholarly work has focused on the philosophy and practice of teaching, on teacher education, and on the moral and ethical dimensions of education. He has examined relations between education and cosmopolitanism as an outlook on our human condition, and is currently exploring the ethical concept of ‘bearing witness’ as an orientation both in inquiry and toward working with teachers. Throughout his research, Hansen draws on the philosophies of education of many time-honored, influential figures, including Plato, W. E. B. Du Bois, Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz and John Dewey. He engages current work on the impact of educational policies on teachers juxtaposed with heeding teachers’ own philosophies of education and raises questions about the fundamental purposes of education in our time.
Prior to joining the TC community, Hansen was professor in the College of Education at the University of Illinois at Chicago, where he directed its Secondary Teacher Education Program. Before that he worked as a secondary school teacher and language arts instructor.
Hansen’s scholarship and publications have been widely recognized with numerous awards and honors. He received the 2024 John Dewey Society Lifetime Achievement Award, and was awarded the 2022 Critics’ Choice Book Award from the American Educational Studies for his 2021 book, Reimagining the call to teach: A witness to teachers and teaching, which was also selected as a Choice Outstanding Academic Title. This sequel to Hansen’s The Call to Teach, which was published by Teachers College Press in 1995, provides a fresh understanding of teaching as a calling in light of contemporary educational developments and challenges.
In his 2011 book, The Teacher and the World: A Study of Cosmopolitanism as Education, Hansen argues that “education continues to happen one person at a time,” and that teachers can support young people in learning to “respond, rather than merely react” to life issues, in part through cultivating a willingness “to learn from rather than merely tolerate others.” With TC's Megan Laverty, Professor of Philosophy and Education, Hansen co-edited A History of Western Philosophy of Education (2021), a five-volume set that traces the development of philosophy of education through Western culture and history. He has also been named a Fellow of the American Educational Research Association (2011), and previously served as president of both the John Dewey Society (2003-05) and the Philosophy of Education Society (2008-09). He received an honorary doctorate from Örebro University (Sweden) in 2012.
Hansen is joined by several members of the TC community in the recognition this year, including A. Lin Goodwin, Evenden Professor Emerita of Education and former Vice Dean of Teacher Education at TC, and TC alum Michelle Fine (Ph.D. ’80, Social Psychology).
[Learn more about this year’s Academy of Education leaders and scholars.]