Faculty Expert Profile

Robert Slavin is director of the Center for Research and Reform in Education and is the author or co-author of 24 books, including "Educational Psychology: Theory into Practice."

He has published extensively on such topics as cooperative learning, comprehensive school reform, ability grouping, school and classroom organization, desegregation, school-based vision care, research review, and evidence-based reform.

Slavin was recently featured in an article by The Hechinger Report for his findings that education research provides little advice on how best to teach writing. The research base for how best to teach writing is very small, especially compared to research into teaching math and reading, Slavin found. “There’s remarkably very little high-quality evidence of what works in writing," he was quoted as saying.

Slavin searched for rigorous research on teaching writing from second grade to high school, The Hechinger Report wrote. "He and his Johns Hopkins colleagues, along with researchers in Belgium and the United Kingdom, found only 14 studies that met their standards. By contrast, he quickly found 69 studies just on teaching reading to high school students."