Rate My Professor Arnetha Ball

Arnetha Ball is the Charles E. Ducommun Endowed Professor (Emerita) of Education at Stanford University’s Graduate School of Education. She is Professor (Emerita) in the Curriculum Studies, Teacher Education, Educational Linguistics, and Race, Inequality, and Language in Education programs. Ball earned a B.A. in Education and an M.S. in Speech Pathology from the University of Michigan in 1971 and 1972, respectively, and a Ph.D. in Language, Literacy, and Culture from Stanford University in 1991. Before her academic career, she served as a speech/language pathologist and taught in preschool, elementary, and secondary classrooms for over 25 years. She founded and directed Children’s Creative Workshop, an early education center providing experiences for students from diverse backgrounds, from 1974 to 1984.

Ball began at Stanford as a research associate and instructor from 1988 to 1991, advanced to associate professor from 1999 to 2007, and professor from 2007 to present. She held administrative positions including inaugural Chair of the Race, Inequality, and Language in Education program from 2016 to 2020, Director of the Program in African and African American Studies from 2010 to 2013 and interim in 2020, and President of the American Educational Research Association from 2011 to 2012. Her research employs sociolinguistic, discourse analytic, and ethnographic approaches to study how language mediates teaching and learning in diverse settings, with focus on her Model of Generative Change for teacher preparation in the U.S., South Africa, Australia, and New Zealand. She is author or co-editor of seven books, including Raciolinguistics: How Language Shapes Our Ideas about Race (2016, co-edited with H. Samy Alim and John R. Rickford) and Studying Diversity in Teacher Education (2011, co-edited with Cynthia A. Tyson), and key articles such as Toward a Theory of Generative Change in Culturally and Linguistically Complex Classrooms (American Educational Research Journal, 2009). Ball is an elected member of the National Academy of Education since 2019, Fellow of the American Educational Research Association, recipient of the 2020 Miriam Aaron Roland Volunteer Service Prize, 2020 President’s Award for Excellence Through Diversity, 2015 St. Clair Drake Teaching Award, and 2009 AERA Palmer O. Johnson Memorial Award.