Arthur Applebee

Arthur Noble Applebee (1946 – September 20, 2015) was a researcher and professional leader in United States secondary education. He obtained his doctorate at the University of London in 1973 and held professorships at Stanford University (1980–1987) and the University at Albany, State University of New York (1987–2015). Active in national policy, he assisted in validating the Common Core State Standards and co-authored fourteen of the National Assessment of Educational Progress's "Reading Report Cards" documenting student achievement. He also documented the state of the teaching of writing in U.S. Secondary Schools in a number of studies.^[1] In addition to his scholarly work, he also was lead author/editor on numerous series of English textbooks for both primary and secondary schools, comprising at least 35 volumes. Applebee served as editor from 1984 to 1991 of Research in the Teaching of English (the official research journal of the National Council of Teachers of English), as president of the National Conference on Research in Language and Literacy and as a member of the Validation Committee for the Common Core State Standards.

The National Council of the Teachers of English in 1998 granted him the David H. Russell Award for Distinguished Research in the Teaching of English for his book Curriculum as Conversation and in 2016 (posthumously) the James R. Squire Award for transformative contribution to the profession. He was elected to the Reading Hall of Fame (2004) and appointed as a fellow of the American Educational Research Association in 2013. His life and accomplishments were honored by leading literacy scholars contributing 14 chapters to English Language Arts Research and Teaching: Revisiting and Extending Arthur Applebee’s Contributions,^[2] a festschrift published by Routledge and by the collection of 22 memorials in Research in the Teaching of English.^[3] The Literacy Research Association has named The Arthur Applebee Award for Excellence in Research on Literacy^[4] in his honor.