Cheryl J. Craig, Ph.D., is a Professor, the Program Lead for Teaching &Teacher Education, and the Houston Endowment Endowed Chair of Urban Education in the Department of Teaching, Learning and Culture at Texas A&M University (TAMU). She is also the Founding Director of the Collaborative for Innovations in Teacher Education (CITE). She understands education in terms of teachers’ lived experiences shaped by stories, contexts, and relationships. Guided by John Dewey’s democratic ideals, Joseph Schwab’s practical view of curriculum, and Michael Connelly and Jean Clandinin’s method of inquiry, she has conducted research at the intersection of curriculum, teaching, and teacher education for nearly three decades. She studies how teachers’ knowledge is created, shared, and transformed and how the contexts of teaching contribute to what teachers know and do and who they can be. She approaches her scholarship through the narrative inquiry research lens, paying close attention to teachers as curriculum makers and how their sense of the best-loved self becomes revealed in the dailiness of active teaching. This conviction has led Cheryl Craig to develop the knowledge community conceptualization where preservice and in-service teachers engage in critical reflection and reconstruct their understandings of what it means to teach while learning alongside fellow teachers. She has also contributed parallel stories, story constellations, and the sophisticated use of serial interpretation to the knowledge base of narrative inquiry and teaching. Craig collaborates closely with teachers, colleagues, and policy leaders—locally, nationally, and internationally—to connect with teachers’ classroom experiences during systemic reform efforts. As the Collaborative's Founding Director, she has also fostered cross-institutional, cross-system, and interdisciplinary partnerships that have bolstered teacher preparation and provided ongoing teacher professional development opportunities. She additionally has cultivated sustained relationships with notable national and international scholars. Craig’s research grows out of collaborative partnerships and focuses on how teachers respond to top-down reform, how they negotiate changing policies, and how they sustain meaningful relationships with students, teachers, parents and communities. She also has rigorously examined mentoring in STEM education, cross-cultural teacher induction programs, and teacher transitions, which likewise demonstrate scholarship productively informing practice. Craig’s contributions show that her groundbreaking research conducted at the intersection where teaching and curriculum meet achieves its highest purpose when it engages, illuminates, and elevates the everyday realities of teachers and teaching in classroom and school milieu.

Cheryl Craig’s impact includes 197 top tier journal articles, 252 chapters, 4-authored and co-authored volumes, and 24 edited books, along with 27 research awards. She also has delivered 95 keynote addresses on all but one continent. Published in 6 languages, she has led 5 research units (3 at AERA), chaired the American Association of Curriculum and Teaching, and been the 6-year Chair of the International Study Association on Teachers and Teaching whose membership grew from 24 to 52 countries under her leadership. Craig is the current Dean of Invisible College (AERA). Her H-Index is 48 with 10,349 citations. Her research is featured in 25 Quartile 1 journals, and she is the Co-Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Teacher Education (whose impact increased from 3.1 to 4.1 in 2025), Executive Editor of Teachers and Teaching, and was a past Associate Editor of Teaching and Teacher Education, which featured her as its most published author. She ranks 6th in teacher education research internationally and places in the top 20 in teaching & curriculum as well, which is a rare achievement. She also is the #1 researcher in narrative inquiry and has raised a career total of $14 million dollars in grants and contracts. In addition to her 14 outstanding publications, Cheryl Craig is an AERA Fellow, a recipient of the AERA Division B (Curriculum) Lifetime Achievement Award, and a winner of the Michael Huberman Research Award. In 2021, she became the only scholar in AERA history to be awarded both Division K (Teaching) top honors in the same year (Legacy Research Award & Exemplary Research Award). Texas A&M University has recognized her with its CEHD Senior Scholar Award and the TAMU Former Students Association Distinguished Research Scholar Award. Globally, ISATT has awarded her its highest international research prize. She has been the dissertation chair for 101 Ph.D. students and 30 master’s thesis students. Craig founded the Portfolio Group and the Faculty Academy, which both are research-producing groups (a teacher research group & an inter-institutional, interdisciplinary faculty group). GPS Scholar has named Cheryl J. Craig a leading world scholar for five years in a row and placed her #1 among the College of Education and Human Development's current faculty members. Almost every week, Research Gate informs her that she is the Department of Teaching, Learning and Culture's most cited and read author.