User:Judsonminer

The user page is for Don Davies, who has chosen the user name Judsonminer (Judson Miner is the real birth name of Don Davies. Don Davies - Biographical Sketch – 2011

Don Davies had a six-decade career in education, both in the United Sates in other countries. Rather than his credentials, publications, and academic accolades, he likes to stress that his prime efforts have been to convince educators, families, and political leaders that education is  not just only for personal development but also an essential tool for societies to address  the damaging inequities of their systems and is tool to make democratic practices more of a  reality in the ways schools, families, communities, and countries actually function.

In May 2011 he was awarded the Presidential Medal Honor at a ceremony in Lisbon recognizing his almost three decades of work in Portugal for the improvement of public schools and colleges. .

To work toward goals such as strengthening democratic practice in schools he founded and directed a non-profit organization, the Institute for Responsive Education, which for 35 years worked in the US and internationally on research and projects to encourage increased parent and community participation in the public schools, especially in economically troubled urban and rural areas.

Portugal was a central locus of Davies’ of the international efforts. Starting in 1984 he was a was a professor in the World Bank-sponsored progress to prepare new faculty members for the new Schools of Education in that country. He later directed a US Information Agency-funded exchange between Boston University professors and six ESE’s. Over about 25 years he has advised Ministry of Education projects on parents and schools,  spoken at many  conferences, and coordinated  studies  of parent and teacher attitudes about parent involvement in Portuguese schools. He was the facilitator of the first multi-national action research study of parent involvement in school reform, examining the issue in Portugal and Australia, Chile, Czechoslovakia, and Spain. In 2004 he gave a keynote address at a conference of the Conselho Nacional de Educacao in Lisbon. .

He was a  professor of education at Boston University from 1974 to 1996 and a Visiting Professor at Northeastern University from 1996 to 2004. He received his BA in Journalism and Political Science and a MA Degree from Stanford University and the Ed.D. Degree  from Teachers College, Columbia University, where in specialized in Teacher Education. He was a Visit Fellow at Yale University from 1973 to 1934. v

He had a brief career as a journalist and was a high school teacher of Journalism and English in Beverly Hills, California. He taught at San Francisco State College and the University of Minnesota. From 1961 through 1967 he was Executive Secretary of the National Commission on Teacher Education and Professional Standards of the National Education Association, the largest teachers’ union in the US.A.

Davies served as Associate and then as Deputy Commissioner of the U.S. Office of Education, during the late 1960s and early 1970s. His interests and responsibilities included improving the preparation of educational personnel, reforming the urban and rural schools serving low-income students, supporting experimentation and research, and expanding opportunities for parents and community residents to influence educational policies and practices.

Davies was Co-Director with Joyce Epstein of the Center on Families, Communities, Schools, and Children's Learning, a national research and development center, from 1990 to 1996.

Davies is the author and co-author of many policy reports and several books, including Beyond the Bake Sale. The Essential Guide to Family-School Partnerships, published in English in 2007 and in Portuguese in both Brazil (2010) and Portugal (scheduled for 2012/), Communities and Their Schools, and Schools Where Parents Make a Difference. He has written numerous articles and reports and made many presentations in a variety of public forums in the United States and several other countries n addition to Portugal,, including Albania, Australia, Argentina, Canada, China, Egypt, Spain, and the United Arab Emirates. In 1990, with Joyce Epstein, he initiated the International Network of Scholars on School-Family Partnerships and the biennial International Roundtables.

. He was awarded the First International Achievement Award by the National Coalition for Parent Involvement in Education, in 1996. In 2009 he was elected to the Beverly Hills High School Hall of Fame.He was married to Joyce Davies for 61 years before she passed away in November 2010. He is the father of two daughters, Druanne Davies and Donna Davies, and four grandchildren, Christa Davies Forman, William and Laura Forman, and Amanda Joyce Davies. . Don Davies, 41 Pleasant Street Marblehead MA 01945 dondav@bu.edu 781 631 7673

.