Bridget Maher
Contact
Location
610 E. University Ave.
Ann Arbor, Michigan 48109-1259
Dr. Bridget L. Maher currently serves as the Detroit P-20 Research and Evaluation Coordinator at the Marsal Family School of Education. In this role, Maher manages actionable and embedded research, evaluation, and reporting efforts to inform local improvements in education and to study models for schooling, teacher education, professional learning, and community partnerships. Maher leads daily research-partnership endeavors, data sharing across multiple stakeholders, research grant development and enactment, and develops data infrastructure and management to support these efforts. Major foci of this research-practice-partnership in public education include: continuous improvement for students' learning and outcomes; equity-centered and trauma-informed teaching and learning; project- and place-based teaching and learning; school-based restorative justice practices; social and emotional engagement; teacher retention, education, and development; and, family and community needs and feedback.
For more information about the Detroit P-20 cradle-to-career educational model and campus.
Maher’s research focuses on three major, but interrelated strands: (1) disciplinary learning and literacy instruction, (2) teacher education and development, and (3) policies—local, state, and national—to support this work in schools. Maher has collaborated on several studies that investigated teacher practice, teaching quality, student outcomes, and the use of educative, evaluative, and observation tools to measure and influence classroom practice. She has also studied instructional design and methods for teacher education and teacher development toward ambitious, disciplinary teaching practice. Maher earned her Ph.D. from the University of Michigan Marsal Family School of Education in 2018, and her dissertation study centered on the disciplinary literacy and learning experiences among a group of students in secondary school and the comparing experiences as they transitioned to college environments. She served as postdoctoral fellow at the Institute for Social Research and Marsal School of Education at the University of Michigan from 2018-2021.
Prior to her roles at Marsal, Maher was a secondary teacher in English, history, and social sciences in grades 6 -12. During her time as a classroom teacher, Maher served as a department lead and as a mentor teacher for the Clinical Rounds project at University of Michigan. Maher completed her K-12 reading specialist credential and earned a Master’s in Education, focused on Language and Literacy, from Harvard University.