Description of Research Expertise

Areas of Expertise

Early childhood
Moral education
School discipline and authority

Professional Biography

Following a brief stint as a school psychologist, Dr. Goodman began a 30-year career combining applied psychology with teaching. At hospitals for children in Washington, D.C., Oakland, California, and Philadelphia, she carried out diagnostic evaluations with preschool children, counseled families, and directed a therapeutic-educational program (out of the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia). For many of these years, she combined her clinical work with teaching as an adjunct professor at the Penn Graduate School of Education. In 1988 she became a tenured associate professor and in 1994 a full professor at Penn GSE.

Dr. Goodman has written widely on the challenges that preschool children with developmental disabilities present to parents, teachers, and the science of psychology. She is the author of a book on early intervention, When Slow Is Fast Enough (1992); a novel nonverbal assessment instrument, The Goodman Lock Box; and a series of videotapes (with Susan Hoban) on families raising youngsters with disabilities. She has written more than 40 articles and chapters in the area.

Dr. Goodman received the Lindback Award for Outstanding Teaching in 1994.

Research Interests and Current Projects

Since 1994, Dr. Goodman’s primary interests have shifted to moral education, both theoretical and applied. At the theoretical level, she addresses such questions as: What is a moral value? How do values develop in children? How do we foster values and, more important, a moral identity? How do we understand and reconcile conflicting values? These issues are the subject of two books she co-authored with Penn law professor Howard Lesnick, The Moral Stake in Education: Contested Premises and Practices (2001) and Moral Education: A Teacher-Centered Approach (2004) and a series of articles. With Usha Balamore, a kindergarten teacher turned principal, she co-authored Teaching Goodness: Engaging the Moral and Academic Promise of Young Children (2003).

At the applied and theoretical level, Dr. Goodman is looking at practices and moral underpinnings (or lack thereof) of school discipline and authority in classrooms. How, for example, are rules legitimated and what is the justification for punishment? What is the distribution of authority between adults and children? How is and how should the term “respect” be understood? For schools to have any moral impact on children, the rules and sanctions must be perceived by students as rightful. Are they? Do we, for example, adequately appreciate the serious disagreements over what is the rightful response to an aggressive act? How can we transform the bureaucratized rule-based disciplinary systems that characterize most public schools, and are resisted by students, into approaches that command their beliefs, support, and desire to comply? Of particular interest is the role that a school’s higher-order commitments have in captivating the child’s allegiance and the indifference to schooling that befalls many children when there are no such higher-order commitments.

Dr. Goodman is also a consultant to those interested in developing (or thinking about) moral education programs, including parents as well as school-based educators.