Katherine Merseth

Full Board Member
Founder of Harvard Children's Initiative

Katherine Merseth has been teaching at the Harvard Graduate School of Education for over 35 years.  Her work concentrates on charter schools, teacher education, mathematics education, and the case-method of instruction. At Harvard, she founded the Harvard Children's Initiative, a university-wide programme focusing on the needs of children as well as the School Leadership and the Teacher Education Programs at the School of Education. In mathematics education, she was the principal investigator of the Mathematics Case Development Project funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF) and the Massachusetts Math and Science Partnership working with middle school mathematics teachers using classroom based cases. Her book “Windows on Teaching Mathematics” (Teachers College Press) represents work in mathematics education and the case method while her involvement as a case method teacher of school administrators exists in her “Cases in Educational Administration” (Longman). In addition to her book on successful charter (semi-independent) schools “Inside Urban Charter Schools”, Merseth has edited five international volumes of cases about classrooms in Brazil, South Africa, Jordan and Chile in English as well as Portuguese, Arabic and Spanish, respectively.

Merseth has her bachelor’s degree in mathematics from Cornell University, a master’s degree in teaching mathematics as well as her doctorate from Harvard University.