UNC School of Education

Joseph R. Neikirk Distinguished Professor of Sociology of Education

T 919.962.2513
F 919.962.1533
gwn@email.unc.edu

212E Peabody Hall
CB 3500

George W. Noblit, Joseph R. Neikirk Distinguished Professor of the sociology of education, became a sociologist in the 1970s, a time of turbulent social change. His initial research on crime, delinquency and deviance led to work on the salience of schooling in the lives of youth and in determining their futures.

While exploring school desegregation, he began learning about race, ethnographic research methods and education, leading him eventually to the School of Education at UNC-Chapel Hill. As he has continued working in these areas, he has become intrigued with how knowledge ─ often taken as good in its own right ─ is implicated in creating the very problems it is asked to solve.

He studies and teaches about how knowledge is constructed, how this knowledge in turn creates difference and how difference is constructed as a problem. For the issue of race, this process means exploring both studies of Whiteness and studies of critical race theory, simultaneously working in the highest reaches of theory and in the everyday lives of people as they struggle to make sense of the world around them. “To me, this means there is not a theory-practice gap, only a failure of imagination,” he says.

• Ph.D. 1973 - University of Oregon, Sociology
• M.S. 1971 - University of Oregon, Sociology
• B.A. 1970 - Hiram College, Sociology and General Science

• Race and Education
• Qualitative Methods
• Sociology of Knowledge
• School Reform
• Arts and Education
• Research Overview

• Qualitative Research Methods
• Social Foundations of Education

• 2001, Fellow at Frank Porter Graham Child Development Center, UNC-CH
  
• 2000, Dina Feitelson award for Outstanding Research, International Reading Association
• 1998-1999, President, American Educational Studies Association
  
• 1997-1998, Vice-President (and subsequently President), American Educational Studies Association

• 2002-2003 Principal Investigator, Sustainability of the A+ Schools Program funded by the Ford Foundation.
• 2001-2003 Co-Principal Investigator, Formative Evaluation for the School Development Program, a two year study funded by School Development Program, Yale University
  
• 2000-2003 Co-Principal Investigator, Marketing of the South and the Education of African Americans, a three year study funded by the Spencer Foundation
  
• 1999-2000 Project Director and Co-Principal Investigator, District Context and Comer Schools, a one year study funded by the Rockefeller Foundation
  
• 1999-2002 Principal Investigator, Evaluation of North Carolina's Charter Schools, a two-year study funded by the North Carolina Department of Public Instruction
  
• 1998-99 Principal Investigator, Second Case Study of Two of North Carolina's School-Based Health Centers, a four month study funded by the North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services, Division of Women's and Children's Health.

• Memberships:

  • American Educational Research Association
  • American Educational Studies Association
  • American Sociological Association
  • American Anthropological Association
  • Phi Delta Kappa

• 2000-present, Editorial Board, Journal of Latino Education
  
• 2000-present, Editorial Board, Journal of Teacher Education
  
• 1999-2000, Council of Advisers, North Carolina Child Advocacy Institute
  
• 1999-2000, Board of Trustees, ARTS of North Carolina
  
• 1999-present, Editorial Board Member, Qualitative Research
  
• 1999, External Reviewer, University of North Carolina-Greensboro

Noblit, G. and Hatt, B. (Eds.) (2003) The future of educational studies. New York: Peter Lang.

Noblit, G., Malloy, C. & Malloy, W. Eds. (2000) The kids got smarter: case studies of successful Comer schools. Cresskill, NJ: Hampton Press.

Fitzgerald, J. and Noblit, G. (2000) "Balance in the Making: Learning to Read in an Ethnically Diverse First-Grade Classroom" Journal of Educational Psychology 92(1) 3-22.

McKinney, Monica et al. (2000) "The Arts in Educational Reform: Wise Practices in the North Carolina A+ Schools Program" Teaching and Learning in the 21st Century North Carolina Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development

Noblit, G. (1999) Particularities: Collected Essays on Ethnography and Education. New York: Peter Lang.

Fitzgerald, J. and Noblit, G. (1999). About Hopes, Aspirations, and Uncertainty: First-Grade English Language Learners' Emergent Reading. Journal of Literacy Research, 31(2),133-182.

Noblit, G. (1999). The Possibilities of Postcritical Ethnographies: An Introduction to this Issue. Educational Foundations, 13 (1), 3-6.

Fitzgerald, J. and Noblit, G. (1997). Rituals of Returning. The Urban Review., 29:4, 297-303. Special Issue on Rituals in Education, edited by R. Quantz and J. Ensign.