About our authors
Anita Woolfolk Hoy was born in Fort Worth, Texas, where her mother taught child development at TCU and her father was an early worker in the computer industry. She is a Texas Longhorn -- all her degrees are from the University of Texas, Austin, the last one a PhD. After graduating, she was a psychologist working with students in elementary and secondary schools in 15 counties of central Texas. She began her career in higher education as a professor of educational psychology at Rutgers University, and then moved to The Ohio State University in 1994. Today she is Professor Emerita at Ohio State. Anita's research focuses on motivation and cognition, specifically, students' and teachers' sense of efficacy and teachers' beliefs about education. For many years she was the editor of Theory Into Practice, a journal that brings the best ideas from research to practicing educators. She is a Fellow of both the American Psychological Association and the American Educational Research Association, and has served as President of Division 15 (Educational Psychology) of APA and Vice-President for Division K (Teaching & Teacher Education) of AERA. Anita also has collaborated with Nancy Perry, University of British Columbia, to write the 2nd edition of Child Development (Pearson, 2015) and with her husband, Wayne Hoy, to complete the 5th edition of Instructional Leadership: A Research-Based Guide to Learning in Schools (Pearson, 2020).
Ellen L. Usher spent her early childhood in Roswell, Georgia, where she had diverse educational experiences that included attending a private nature-based school and public elementary and middle schools. She went to high school in rural South Carolina and urban Atlanta. A lifelong Francophile, she earned her Bachelor's in foreign language education and began her professional career teaching French to elementary school students in Atlanta Public Schools. Inspired by her own favorite former teachers, Ellen transitioned to teaching fifth and sixth grades while pursuing a master's degree in middle grades education from Oglethorpe University. After earning her PhD in Educational Studies from Emory University, Ellen began her career in higher education at the University of Kentucky in 2007, where she is director of the P20 Motivation and Learning Lab, an intergenerational, interdisciplinary team of researchers engaged in projects that explore human motivation in a variety of teaching and learning contexts. Ellen is a Fellow of the American Psychological Association and past Chair of the Motivation in Education Special Interest Group of the American Educational Research Association.
