Dr. Joyce L. Epstein

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Co-Director
jepstein@jhu.edu
410-516-8807

Joyce L. Epstein, Ph.D. in sociology from Johns Hopkins University, is Co-Director of the Center on School, Family, and Community Partnerships and National Network of Partnership Schools (NNPS), Professor of Education at the School of Education, and associated faculty in the Department of Sociology at Johns Hopkins University. In 1995, she established the National Network of Partnership Schools (NNPS), which provides professional development for school teams and district and state leaders to develop research-based programs of family and community engagement.

Dr. Epstein has over one hundred fifty publications on the nature and effects of family and community involvement. These include School, Family, and Community Partnerships: Your Handbook for Action, Fourth Edition (Corwin Press, 2019) and a textbook for college courses for future teachers and administrators, School, Family, and Community Partnerships: Preparing Educators and Improving Schools, Third Edition (Taylor & Francis, 2023). Her current research focuses on how to scale up partnership programs throughout a district or across a state, and how district and school leadership affects the quality of school-based programs of family and community engagement and results for students. Among major awards, she was named a Fellow of the American Educational Research Association (AERA) and the Elizabeth Cohen Award for Applied Research from AERA’s Sociology of Education Special Interest Group. In all of her work, she is interested in the connections of research, policy, and practice. (See the Publications List in the section Research and Evaluation.)