Dr. Emilie Vanessa Siddle-Walker

Dr. Emilie Vanessa Siddle was born in Caswell County, North Carolina, to Reverend Theodore Roosevelt Walker (1911-2000) and Helen Elizabeth Beasley Siddle (1929-1991). She attended the local elementary school and graduated in 1976 from Bartlett Yancey High School (Yanceyville, North Carolina). She is the Winship Distinguished Research Professor at Emory University.

Walker began her career as a high school teacher in Chapel Hill High School and then at Cummings High School. She also taught English seminars for minority students at Phillips Academy. Prior to accepting a position at Emory, she taught at Wheelock and Elon Colleges and the University of Pennsylvania.

Walker's higher education career began with a teaching assistantship at the Harvard Graduate School of Education in 1985. She served as an adjunct instructor of critical reading and writing at Wheelock College in Boston in 1987 and as an assistant professor in the English and education departments at Elon College in North Carolina the following year. Walker then served as a visiting assistant professor in the language in education division of the University of Pennsylvania Graduate School of Education from 1988 to 1990. She moved to Emory as an assistant professor in 1990 and was promoted to associate professor in 1996. She now is Winship Distinguished Research Professor at Emory.

For 15 years, her research has focused on the segregated schooling of African American children in the South, considering both portraits of individual school communities (Their Highest Potential, University of North Carolina Press) and, more recently, the network of educational activity that undergirded the development of these schools throughout the South. The latter results are reported in the American Educational Research Association Journal, the Review of Educational Research, and a book forthcoming (Principal Leaders, University of North Carolina Press).
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The Grawemeyer Awards

Grant Effectiveness Project

A Half-Century of Challenge (2004)
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Dr. Emilie Vanessa Siddle Walker
Winship Distinguished Research Professor
Professor Siddle Walker
Division of Educational Studies
Emory University
1784 North Decatur Road, Suite 240
Atlanta, GA 30322

Courses Taught

* Qualitative Research Methods Introduction
* History of African-American Education
* English Instructional Methods
* Introduction to Education

Degrees

B.A. - University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Ed.M. - Harvard University
Ed.D. - Harvard University

Research Interest

Historical and cultural influences on the teaching and learning of African American students

Selected Publications

Books

Walker, V. S. (1996). Their highest potential: An African American school community in the segregated south. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press.

Hidalgo, N., McDowell, C., Siddle, E. (Eds.) (1990). Facing racism in American education. Cambridge, MA: Harvard Educational Review Reprint Series.
Manuscripts and Book Reviews

Walker, V. S. (2005). Organized resistance and black educators' quest for school equality, 1878-1938. Teachers College Record 107, 355-388.

Walker, V. S. (2005). After methods, then what? A researcher's response to the report of the National Research Council. Teachers College Record, 107, 30-37.

Walker, V. S., & Archung, K. N. (2003). The segregated schooling of blacks in the southern United States and South Africa. Comparative Education Review, 47, 21-40.

Walker, V.S. (2001). African American teaching in the South: 1940-1960. American Educational Research Journal, 38, 751-779.

Walker, V. S. (2000). Valued segregated schools for African American children in the South, 1935-1969: A review of common themes and characteristics. Review of Educational Research, 70, 253-286.

Walker, V. S. (1996). Can institutions care? Evidence from the segregated schooling of African American children. In M. Shujaa (Ed.), Beyond desegregation: The quality of African American schooling. Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin Press.

Walker, V. S. (1995). Research at risk: Lessons learned in an African American communiuty, Educational Foundations, 9(1), 5-15.

Engelhard, G., Gordon, B., Siddle Walker, E., Gabrielson, S. (1994). The influence of writing tasks and gender on quality of writing for black and white students. Journal of Educational Research, 87, 197-209.

Walker, V. S. (1993). "Caswell county training school, 1933-1969: Relationships between community and school." Harvard Educational Review, 63, 161-182. Reprint in G. Noya, K. Geismar, and G. Nicoleau (Eds.), 1995, Shifting histories: Transforming schools for social change, Cambridge, MA: Harvard Educational Review Print Series.

Walker, V. S. (1993). "Interpersonal caring in the "good" segregated schooling of African American children: Evidence from the case of Caswell County Training School." Urban Review, 25, 63-77. Reprint in D. Rich and J. Van Galen, 1994, Caring in an unjust world: Negotiating borders and barriers in schools. New York: SUNY.

Walker, E. (1992). Falling asleep and African American student failure. Theory into Practice, 31, 321-327.
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Photograph from the cover of Their Highest Potential: An African American School Community in the Segregated South, Vanessa Siddle Walker (1996).
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