Sean Kelly (PhD, Sociology; University of Wisconsin-Madison) is Professor in the Department of Educational Foundations, Organizations, and Policy. He is an expert in the Sociology of Education, Education Policy, and School Leadership. From 2005–2011 he was an Assistant Professor of Sociology and researcher at the Center for Research on Educational Opportunity at the University of Notre Dame. His professional contributions to Sociology include serving as Program Chair (2010) and board member of the Sociology of Education Association (2010) and program chair (2013) and Chair (2016–2018) of AERA’s Sociology of Education SIG. From 2019–2024 Kelly was Co-Editor of the American Educational Research Journal.
Dr. Kelly’s current research includes development and testing of instructional observation systems based on fine-grained, automated measures of classroom discourse. This work is based on Kelly and colleagues’ seminal proof-of-concept research on automatically detecting authentic questions (Educational Researcher, 2018), and subsequent projects developing the Teacher Talk Tool (with Sidney D’Mello). This research led to the development of The Agnostic Theory of Professional Learning (Kelly, 2023, Education Policy Analysis Archives). In addition to a variety of graduate courses in education, Kelly teaches a survey research methods course (EFOP 3471, Constructing Questionnaires & Conducting Surveys).
