Jeff Zwiers
Senior Researcher in the Stanford Graduate School of
Education
Jeff Zwiers is a senior researcher at the Stanford Graduate
School of Education and director of professional development for the
Understanding Language Initiative, a research and professional learning project
focused on improving the education of academic English learners. He has
consulted for national and international teacher development projects and has
published articles and books on literacy, cognition, discourse, and academic
language. His current research focuses on improving professional learning
models and developing classroom instruction that fosters high-quality oral
language and constructive conversations across disciplines.
Sara Rutherford-Quach
Lecturer in the Stanford Graduate School of Education
Sara Rutherford-Quach is the Director of Academic Programs
& Research for Understanding Language and a Lecturer in the Stanford
Graduate School of Education. A former bilingual elementary teacher, Sara has
more than 13 years of experience working with linguistically diverse students
and their teachers and has conducted extensive research on instructional
practices for English learners. Sara was previously awarded a National Academy
of Education Spencer Foundation Dissertation Fellowship for her work on the
role of silence and speech in an elementary classroom serving language-minority
students. Her areas of interest include classroom discourse and interaction
analysis; language, culture, and instruction in multilingual and multicultural
educational environments; institutional, policy and curricular change; and
educational equity.
Kenji Hakuta
Lee L. Jacks Professor of Education, Stanford University
Kenji Hakuta is the Lee L. Jacks Professor of Education at
Stanford University. He has been at Stanford since 1989, except for three years
when he left to serve the new University of California at Merced as its
Founding Dean of the School of Social Sciences, Humanities and Arts. He
received his Ph.D. in Experimental Psychology from Harvard University, and
began his career as a developmental psycholinguist at Yale University. He is
the author of many research papers and books on language, bilingualism and
education, including Mirror of Language: The Debate on Bilingualism. Hakuta is
active in education policy. He has testified to Congress and courts on language
policy, the education of language minority students, affirmative action in
higher education, and improvement of quality in educational research.
