Bio
Dr. Elizabeth Schiavone Gotwalt is the inaugural director of the EdTerps Learning Academy at the University of Maryland College of Education. The EdTerps Learning Academy (ETLA) supports graduate and professional learning opportunities for working educators at the College of Education. The learners served by this office are almost entirely practicing education professionals seeking part‑time programming at the College of Education to pursue initial licensure, continuing education credits, or professional learning hours for recertification. The EdTerps Learning Academy designs customized programming for this population, including programming developed in partnership with local school districts.
Dr. Gotwalt earned her Master's in Teaching from Columbia University Teachers’ College in 2014 and a doctorate in education from the University of Pennsylvania in 2022. Dr. Gotwalt has an MSDE Advanced Professional License (APL) in secondary Social Studies education and has extensive experience in inquiry-based social studies education, as well as interdisciplinary humanities and literacy instruction in grades 4-12. Her work as a teacher educator includes working with pre-service teachers, in-service teachers, master's students, and doctoral students.
At the University of Maryland College of Education, Dr. Gotwalt co-leads the Virtual Coaching Academy, a CPD course for experienced educators working as mentor teachers to pre-service teacher candidates designed to strengthen their instructional coaching abilities and to support them in leveraging research-backed practices in video-based instructional coaching. She is the founder of The One Thing Conference and Workshop Series, which provides high-quality, practice-based, MSDE PDP-aligned professional learning experiences for Maryland PK-12 educators, school leaders, and education professionals.
Dr. Gotwalt’s research is driven by the question of how to support teachers to enact ambitious, student-centered instruction. While at the University of Pennsylvania, she worked as a research specialist on two grant-funded research projects studying teacher professional learning: the Learning Labs Project and the Project-Based Learning Research Team. Her research is driven by the question of how to support teachers to enact ambitious, student-centered instruction. Her recent scholarship studies pedagogies of teacher education for supporting changes in teachers’ pedagogical reasoning. Research interests also include pedagogies of teacher education for job-embedded learning and responsive instruction; novice instructional coach development; and breaking the fourth wall in research practice partnerships.
Publications
Gotwalt, E.S., Kavanagh, S.S., Danielson, K. (2026). Learning to Let Go: Transformations in Teachers’ Pedagogical Reasoning About Classroom Discussion. Teaching and Teacher Education, 172, 105372.
Kavanagh, S. S., Gotwalt, E. S., Guillotte, A., & Bernhard, T. (2024). Differentiating Between Core Practices and Best Practices: Exploring Divergent Purposes for Developing a Professional Language for Teaching. Teachers College Record, 126(11-12), 59-89.
Gotwalt, E. S. (2023). Noticing structural inequities in classroom discussions: The relationship between teacher educator pedagogies and teachers’ noticing. Teaching and Teacher Education, 131, 104202.
Kavanagh, S. S., Gotwalt, E. S., & Farrow, J. (2023). Practice-based coaching for project-based teaching: Understanding relationships between coaching practice and teaching practice. Teaching and Teacher Education, 132, 104255.
Gotwalt, E. S. (2023). Putting the purpose in practice: Practice-based pedagogies for supporting teachers’ pedagogical reasoning. Teaching and Teacher Education, 122, 103975.
Kavanagh, S. S., Danielson, K. A., & Gotwalt, E.S., (2022). Preparing in advance to respond in-the-moment: Investigating parallel changes in planning and enactment in teacher professional development. Journal of Teacher Education. Advance online publication.
Kavanagh, S. S., Resnick, A. F., Ghousseini, H., Gotwalt, E. S., Cordero-Siy, E., Kazemi, E., & Dutro, E. (2022). Breaking the fourth wall: Reaching beyond observer/performer binaries in studies of teacher and researcher learning. Cognition and Instruction, 40(1), 126-147.
Gotwalt, E. S., & Hausburg, T. C. (2020). Becoming coaches: A study of two novices’ journey. Teaching and Teacher Education, 95, 103145.