Jerome Murphy is a specialist in the management and politics of education. His teaching and research focus on administrative practice and organizational leadership, government policy, program implementation and evaluation, and qualitative methodology. He has examined educational policy and practices in England, Australia, Colombia, China, and South Africa, and has participated in international exchange meetings on educational issues in Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Israel, and Russia. Murphy also conducted some of the earliest studies of the implementation of the Great Society education programs and the role of the states in educational policy and governance, and made substantial contributions to data-collection techniques in educational evaluation.

More recently, he has written about the unheroic aspects of leadership in education, and about the changing roles of superintendents. For almost 20 years, Murphy was a full-time administrator at HGSE, first as associate dean from 1982 to 1991 and then as dean from 1992 to 2001. As dean, Murphy led the development of new initiatives in learning technologies, arts education, neuroscience and education, and school leadership. A former math teacher, he helped develop domestic legislation in the former U.S. Department of Health, Education, and Welfare; was associate director of the White House Fellows Program; and founded and directed the Massachusetts Internships in Education.

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