Dr. Dwight W. Allen

Dwight W. Allen is Eminent Scholar of Educational Reform, Emeritus at Old Dominion University in Norfolk, Virginia, USA. He received his BA, MA and Ed.D. from Stanford University in 1953-59. He is known internationally for his work with distance education and microteaching (his teaching assessment concept developed at Standard in 1960s), later simplified by incorporating the 2+2 model. Among hundreds of his publications are Schools for a New Century: A Conservative Approach to Radical School Reform (1992), and American Schools: The $100 Billion Challenge (2000), coauthored with his former student Bill Cosby.

After teaching at Stanford for nine years from 1959 to 1967, he served as dean of School of Education, University of Massachusetts at Amherst. Dr. Allen has led many educational reform projects and consulted with ministries of education, universities, and private sector organizations in more than 70 countries. He served as chief technical advisor to large scale educational reform projects in China, jointly sponsored by the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) and the Ministry of Education in China and as principal investigator of ACTT Now, a $1.3 Million US Department of Education project with Old Dominion University and the Brunswick County Schools in Virginia. His scholarship and service have won him numerous awards.

He co-chaired the WorldAgInfo Design Team, a project which developed recommendations for agricultural information initiatives in South Asia and Africa for the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

Since retirement he has continued to consult for the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation in several agricultural projects, and for universities and other institutions in China, Hong Kong, and Sri Lanka.

His research areas include educational reform, teacher education, curriculum development, international education, and educational leadership.