Gerald LeTendre

Gerald K. LeTendre, Professor of Education and International Affairs, is chair of the Educational Policy Studies Department at Pennsylvania State University. He currently is editor of the American Journal of Education and serves on the editorial board of the Comparative Education Review. He received his BA (magna cum laude) in sociology from Harvard University and was awarded a Rockefeller Fellowship to do fieldwork among Tibetan refugees. He completed his graduate work at Stanford University where he received an MA in sociology and a Ph.D. in education. He has been the recipient of a Japan Foundation Fellowship, a Johann Jacobs Young Scholar Award, and a Spencer Post-doctoral Fellowship, and was a Fulbright Senior Scholar at the University of Bremen in Germany (2003–04). He has published on a broad range of topics in comparative and international education, including the articles “What Is Tracking? Cultural Expectations in the U.S., Germany and Japan” (American Educational Research Journal) and “The Policy Trap: National Educational Policy and the Third International Math and Science Study” (International Journal of Educational Policy Research and Practice). His most recent books include National Differences, Global Similarities: World Culture and the Future of Schooling (with David Baker), Learning to Be Adolescent: Growing up in U.S. and Japanese Middle Schools, and Intense Years: How Japanese Adolescents Balance School, Family and Friends (with Becky Fukuzawa). His current research interests include changing work roles for teachers cross-nationally and the diffusion of prevention programs in schools worldwide.