Professor Emerita
School of Education, Room 115
University of Colorado at Boulder
249 UCB
Boulder CO 80309
Phone: 303-492-7951
Fax: 303-492-7090
Email: margaret.lecompte@colorado.edu

Margaret D. LeCompte is professor of education and sociology. She is internationally known as one of the leading proponents of qualitative and ethnographic research and evaluation in education. In addition to numerous articles and book chapters on research methods in education and the social sciences, her research also includes studies of school reform and school organization, and of at-risk, ethnically diverse, gifted, artistically creative, and language minority students. A critical theorist trained in action research and the interactionist tradition, her fieldwork includes a five-year study of school reform and culture on the Navajo Nation in the United States, a longitudinal study of programs for urban American Indian children in the Southwest, and an ongoing study of identity construction among middle school children in an arts enrichment public school. She has won the University Press of America award for Outstanding Research Article in 1994 and the American Educational Studies Association (AESA) award for Outstanding Book in 1986.

Dr. LeCompte is a member of numerous professional organizations in education and anthropology and was president of the Council on Anthropology and Education of the American Anthropology Association. She serves on several editorial boards as well as committees for the American Educational Research Association. She served as editor of the journal, Review of Educational Research from 2003-2006.

Education:
PhD Education and the Social Order, University of Chicago, 1974
MA Education and the Social Order, University of Chicago, 1969
BA Political Science, Northwestern University, 1964