Professional Biography
John Puckett teaches courses and seminars in American education reform, history, policy, and practice; education and the American city; and John Dewey. He served as associate dean of Penn GSE from 1998–2004 and again in 2006–2007. Dr. Puckett chaired the Educational Leadership Division from 1999–2000 and the Education Policy Division (EPD) from 2007–11. He also served on the School’s Executive Committee for eleven years. Dr. Puckett’s background includes six years of teaching and administrative work in public and private secondary schools in North Carolina, Georgia, and Florida. He holds a Ph.D. in education from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Before coming to Penn in 1987, Dr. Puckett was director of research and development for REAL Enterprises, a non-profit organization that helped catalyze school-based economic development projects in the rural South.
At Penn, Dr. Puckett has been actively involved in building partnerships with West Philadelphia schools. From 1988–1992, he worked with Ira Harkavy to develop the University of Pennsylvania’s Center for Community Partnerships, which is now called the Netter Center. In conjunction with the Netter Center and the School of Arts and Sciences’ Urban Studies Program, he teaches undergraduate academically-based community service seminars that focus on school and neighborhood improvement projects in West Philadelphia. He has co-authored a number of journal articles and book chapters with faculty affiliated with the Netter Center, advancing the development of university-assisted community schools and academically-based community service.
Research Interests and Current Projects
Dr. Puckett is currently a Distinguished Fellow of the Netter Center. Other current projects include leadership roles in the West Philadelphia Community History Center and Penn GSE’s Independent School Teaching Residency program. He is also a frequent Bodek Lecturer for the University. Dr. Puckett serves on various university, community, public school, and citywide advisory boards and task forces. One of his recent projects was a successful five-year community organizing effort to build a new high school in West Philadelphia. In 1991–92, Dr. Puckett was designated a Spencer Foundation/National Academy of Education postdoctoral fellow; his study centered on the history of the community school concept from 1886 to the present. In 1996–97, he was designated a Fulbright Scholar to Germany, where he lectured in American Studies at the Otto-von-Guericke-Universität in Magdeburg. Dr. Puckett’s MOOC, American Education Reform, with Penn GSE’s Michael C. Johanek, appears annually on Coursera’s online platform.
Dr. Puckett is the author of Foxfire Reconsidered: A Twenty-Year Experiment in Progressive Education (University of Illinois Press, 1989); Leonard Covello and the Making of Benjamin Franklin High School: Education as If Citizenship Mattered (Temple University Press, 2007), with Michael C. Johanek; Dewey’s Dream: Universities and Democracies in an Age of Education Reform (Temple University Press, 2007), with Lee Benson and Ira Harkavy; and Becoming Penn: The Pragmatic American University, 1950–2000 (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2015). Dr. Puckett is also the creator and curator of the West Philadelphia Collaborative History project.
Selected Publications
