Interpretive Discussion

Sophie Haroutunian-Gordon has served as professor and director of the Master of Science in Education Program (MSEd) at Northwestern University for twenty-two years; she retired as director in August 2013. At the start of her professional career, she taught sixth grade for five years, then earned a PhD at the University of Chicago, where she joined the faculty. In 1991, she went to Northwestern. An educational philosopher by training, she is a past president of the Philosophy of Education Society (2003). She conducts research on topics related to the philosophy of education, including interpretive discussion, that is, discussion about the meaning of texts. She has written three books on the topic, the first of which, Turning the Soul: Teaching Through Conversation in the High School, received an American Educational Studies Association Critics Choice Award in 1994. Her Learning to Teach Through Discussion: The Art of Turning the Soul, a study of two MSEd students who were learning to lead discussions, was published in 2009. Haroutunian-Gordon is coeditor of special issues of Teachers College Record and Educational Theory on the topic of listening—an interest that has grown out of her research.