Judith Warren Little is a sociologist whose research focuses on teachers' work and careers, the organizational and policy contexts of teaching, and teachers’ professional development. In particular, she investigates the policies and resources that support or constrain teacher learning in both formal professional development and informal workplace settings. Her earliest work established the importance of school-level workplace cultures, collegial ties, and professional norms as conditions supportive of teacher learning and school improvement. Over decades, employing ethnographic and discourse analysis methods, she has delved into the collaborative dynamics that differentiate robust, generative teacher work groups from other, less productive groups. Her most recent study explored teachers’ work at the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic and throughout the following two school years, resulting in the co-authored book Going the Distance: The Teaching Profession in a Post-COVID World. Professor Little is an elected member of the National Academy of Education and an elected Fellow of the American Educational Research Association.
Note: Although I remain active in research, I have retired from full-time teaching and advising and am no longer accepting new PhD students.
Publications
Selected publications. Please see the full c.v. for a more comprehensive list.
Little, J.W. (in press) Teachers and their colleagues: 50 years beyond Schoolteacher, in Handbook on Teachers' Work: International Perspectives on Research and Practice, edited by Nina Bascia and Rhiannon Maton. London: Routledge.
Bartlett, L., Thompson, A., Little, J.W., & Collins, R. (2025). Going the Distance: The Teaching Profession in a Post-COVID World. Cambridge: Harvard Education Press.
Collins, R., Bartlett, L., Thompson, A., Little, J.W., Darwich, L. (2023). Teachers' work in the context of COVID-19. In: Tierney, R.J., Rizvi, F., Erkican, K. (Eds.), International Encyclopedia of Education, vol. 5. Elsevier, pp. 636– 647. https://dx.doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-12-818630-5.04101-4.
Little, J.W. (2015). Insights for teacher education from cross-field studies of professional preparation. In Smeby, J-C. & Sutphen, M. (Eds.) From Vocational to Professional Education: Educating for Social Welfare. (pp. 50-69). London: Routledge.
Little, J.W. (2012). Understanding data use practices among teachers: The contribution of micro-process studies. American Journal of Education 118 (2), 143-166.
Horn, I.S. & Little, J.W. (2010), Attending to problems of practice: Routines and resources for professional learning in teachers’ workplace interactions. American Educational Research Journal 47 (1), pp. 181-217.
