Diana Slaughter Kotzin

Dr. Diana Slaughter Kotzin was the inaugural Constance E. Clayton Professor in the Graduate School of Education at the University of Pennsylvania. She held the position from 1998 to 2011 and is now Professor Emerita. Her research interests included culture, primary education, and home-school relations facilitating academic achievement. Immediately following retirement (2011-12), Kotzin (aka Slaughter-Defoe) published Black Educational Choice: Assessing the Private and Public Alternatives to K-12 Public Schools with colleagues; Messages for Educational Leadership: The Constance E. Clayton Lectures; and Racial Stereotypes and Child Development. 

Prior to joining the Penn faculty, Kotzin taught for 20 years at Northwestern University’s School of Education and Social Policy (1977-97). She was a faculty member at Howard University, (1967-68), Yale University (1968-70), the University of Chicago (1970-77), and the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign (1980-81). After receiving BA ('62) and MA ('64) degrees, she earned her doctorate from the Committee on Human Development, University of Chicago in 1968, specializing in developmental and clinical psychology.