Brad Cawn

Brad Cawn is a teacher educator, author, researcher, and trainer who specializes in helping schools and teachers integrate ambitious teaching and learning—inquiry-based instruction, disciplinary literacy, project-based learning, etc.—across the content areas. Critical to ensuring the successful implementation of these instructional improvement efforts is an equally rigorous approach to professional learning, and Brad’s teacher supports—be it training, coaching, or advising—incorporate many of these same pedagogical elements.

Brad is the author of the Solution Tree books Texts, Tasks, and Talk (2015) and Ambitious Instruction (2020). He is also authoring a forthcoming book on facilitating and scaling innovative thinking, his first manuscript for the broader business and self-help segments. He has supported and advised some of the nation’s largest school districts, including Los Angeles Unified and Chicago Public Schools, as well as US Department of Education and Teach for America and has served as a consultant for numerous national organizations. Among his signature achievements was leading a Gates Foundation–funded research project on how the Common Core has informed and affected instructional leadership. His report on the findings, Ambitious Leadership (2016), is available online.

Brad is a former high school English teacher and current university-based instructor, with more than ten years of experience teaching graduate-level coursework, including at Northwestern University, University of Michigan, and DePaul University. Brad earned a BA in English from DePaul University and completed graduate work in secondary education at Northwestern University; he also has an MBA from DePaul. He is a doctoral candidate in teaching and teacher education at the University of Michigan.

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