Chair, Department of Educational Foundations, Organizations, and Policy

Lori Delale-O’Connor, Ph.D., is an Associate Professor at the University of Pittsburgh Center for Urban Education and Associate Chair of the Department of Educational Foundations, Organizations, and Policy. She currently teaches courses in qualitative methods, urban education, and the social contexts of education. Dr. Delale-O’Connor’s research focuses on examining the connections between families, communities, and education across spaces with a particular focus on fostering equity and justice for children and youth in urbanized educational systems.

Dr. Delale-O’Connor earned her Ph.D. in Sociology from Northwestern University where she was also a certificate fellow in the Multidisciplinary Program in Education Sciences — a pre-doctoral training program funded by the Institute of Education Sciences. She also holds an M.Ed. in secondary education from Boston College, where she was a Donovan Urban Scholar and taught secondary social studies in the Boston Public Schools. Dr. Delale-O’Connor’s research has been published in the American Educational Research Journal, Teachers College Record, and Urban Education, among other outlets. She is also co-author of the 2019 book, “These Kids Are Out of Control”: Why We Must Reimagine “Classroom Management” for Equity (Sage Publications).

Dr. Delale-O’Connor’s work has received support from the National Science Foundation, the Spencer Foundation, and the Institute of Education Sciences (IES). Prior to joining the School of Education, Dr. Delale-O’Connor was a research scientist at Child Trends, a non-profit research center focused on improving the well-being of children across the lifespan.