Lauren Lauter

Lauren Lauter is a 3rd year PhD student in the school of education in the department of Curriculum and Instruction at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. She is specializing in comparative and international education with a focus on teacher training. She came to Madison after 8 years teaching elementary school in Chicago, and developing teacher training curriculum in Mumbai, India with the American India Foundation and Muktangan NGO. Lauren has been on FLAS (Foreign Language and Area Studies fellowship) this year in Hindi, and is finishing up her sixth semester in the language. Lauren has studied, worked and traveled in India extensively, as well as worked in education for almost a decade there and in the US. Lauren’s work this summer is interested in investigating privatization movements in education, particularly in Mumbai and Delhi, and the ways which teacher training programs are influenced by these reforms – both in message and mechanism. Her work this summer aims to clarify the educational ecosystems in the cities she visits, strengthen her relationships with key stakeholders and set up her sites for dissertation research.