Serves as the Director of the Wisconsin Center for Education Research, part of UW‒Madison’s School of Education, and is a Professor of Learning Sciences in the Department of Educational Psychology. Dr. Bell’s education career is rooted in teaching. She began as a high school science teacher in North Carolina and later became assistant professor in Educational Policy with a joint appointment in Educational Leadership and Curriculum and Instruction at the University of Connecticut, Neag School of Education. WCER’s director earned her B.A. in Chemistry at Dartmouth College and a doctorate at Michigan State University in Curriculum, Teaching and Educational Policy. Dr.Bell’s work focuses on creating a better understanding between the intersections of research, policy and practice. Her mixed-methods research analyzes the measurement of teaching and the validity of measures of teaching quality, especially observational measures. In collaboration with global teaching experts, Dr. Bell designed the observation systems for a groundbreaking study that looked at the teaching practices of 700 teachers in eight countries, called the TALIS (Teaching and Learning International Survey)Video Study.