Lilian Katz

Lilian Gonshaw Katz (born 1932) is a professor emerita of early childhood education at the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign, where she is also principal investigator for the Illinois Early Learning Project, and a contributor to the Early Childhood and Parenting Collaborative. She founded two journals: Early Childhood Research Quarterly for which she served as editor-in-chief during its first six years, and Early Childhood Research & Practice the first on-line peer-reviewed early-childhood journal for which she remains editor-in-chief. Her scholarly work focused on the developmental stages of a teacher, child social development, and she has been a proponent of the project-based learning approach to childhood education, believing children learn best in informal and interactive situations.

She was born and raised in England, moving to the United States in 1947.

Katz is a past president of the National Association for the Education of Young Children and former director of the ERIC Clearinghouse on Elementary & Early Childhood Education. She has published Talks with Teachers of Young Children (1995), a collection of her essays. In 2001 the second edition of her Engaging Children's Minds: The Project Approach (with S. C. Chard) was published. She is currently chair of the editorial board of the International Journal of the Early Years published in the United Kingdom. The Clearinghouse on Early Education and Parenting (CEEP) organized a symposium in her honor in 2000.