I am a professor of foundations and social studies education at Utah State University. My research focuses on curriculum and instruction in the areas of perspective consciousness and social justice as they relate to critical democratic education. I was recently awarded the American Educational Studies Association 2017 Critics' Choice Book Award for my book entitled, "Critical Democratic Education and LGBTQ-Inclusive Curriculum: Opportunities and Constraints." My research has been published in scholarly journals such as Theory and Research in Social Education, the Social Studies, Social Studies Research and Practice, International Journal of Social Studies Research, Journal of Teaching and Teacher Education, the Journal of Public Deliberation, and the London Review of Education. For more information about my work, please refer to my Curriculum Vitae below. I am a former elementary school teacher.
The rise of authoritarianism and exclusionary nationalism has shown a critical need to teach stud... more The rise of authoritarianism and exclusionary nationalism has shown a critical need to teach students how to build, maintain and participate in democratic communities. This requires students to understand how authoritarianism and nationalism exclude people and perspectives in communities. While inclusionary nationalism can create an identity that unites people, we focus upon the divisive form of nationalism that is exclusionary. This article first describes the context for critical education for democracy in the face of authoritarianism and nationalism. We follow with a conceptual analysis of critical education for democracy. This involves the ways that students can identify antidemocratic discourses in order to promote democratic discourses. The model that we present relies upon student discourse analysis and elements of greeting, rhetoric and narrative for increasing inclusion in democratic communities. We conclude with illustrations of classroom inquiries, discussions and deliber...
International Journal of Literacy, Culture, and Language Education, 2012
Curriculum contentions are cultural struggles. As an illustration, we examine contention surround... more Curriculum contentions are cultural struggles. As an illustration, we examine contention surrounding which and how languages are taught in the curriculum. We (the authors) locate this struggle within our positionalities, as a departure for ouranalysis of competing ideologies surrounding language and curriculum. We use a dialogical methodology to examine tensions between monocultural and multicultural ideologies. An imaginary dialogue between us, Hirsch, and Bakhtin provides an illustration. Based upon the struggles located in the bodies of the authors and the imaginary dialogue of two cultural theorists, we conclude that a monological curriculum represents the domination of one cultural group over others rather than the pedagogical and social rationales provided by opponents of multilingual education.
Abstract This article discusses a case study that explored the potential of nonfiction graphic no... more Abstract This article discusses a case study that explored the potential of nonfiction graphic novels to develop pre-service teachers' understanding of agency in a social studies methods course. White pre-service teachers were aske`d to read one graphic novel and then add frames, re-narrate frames, and reflect on their decisions. The positionalities of researchers, who are White males, and participants were part of our analysis. The researchers found that pre-service teachers made revisions to the graphic novels to change the historical actors' decisions: within the constraints of the historical situation's circumstances; to better fit their own ethical framework; and to critique the author's interpretation of the historical event and the amount of agency assigned to certain historical actors. We also reported findings related to shifts in understanding related to positionality. The pre-service teachers' revisions demonstrated their understanding of historical actors' ability to make choices; however, for most pre-service teachers those decisions were limited by, and insignificant in comparison to, the constraints of societal structures. Most pre-service teachers viewed these structures as operating outside of the realm of ethics that they used to articulate and identify agency, and thus, these structures were not responsive to changes in individual or collective agency. Implications are provided for social studies teacher educators.
Banks (1994) names prejudice reduction as one of five dimensions of multicultural education. Alth... more Banks (1994) names prejudice reduction as one of five dimensions of multicultural education. Although children develop prejudicial beliefs, attitudes, and values at young ages, research demonstrates that when multicultural knowledge and values are combined with intergroup contact, prejudice is often reduced. In this article, I connect multiple literatures in order to present an overarching picture of prejudice and its reduction in classrooms. First, I describe some negative impacts of prejudice and how prejudice develops at very young ages. Second, utilizing another of Banks’s dimensions of multicultural education, I describe the knowledge construction process as a necessary factor in prejudice reduction. Finally, intergroup contact theory and complex instruction are described as a guide for reducing prejudice in classrooms.
Social networks and communities are rapidly expanding and changing due to the accelerating pace o... more Social networks and communities are rapidly expanding and changing due to the accelerating pace of globalization. In this article, we examine new possibilities for the reform of curriculum and educational research in a way that is responsive to increasingly multicultural and global communities. Drawing on literatures in the areas of multicultural, global, and civic education, we conducted a critical qualitative case study of four elementary school teachers. The teachers, two in the United States and two in the United Kingdom, are known to be exemplary at synthesizing multicultural, global, and civic education. We, the two authors, one a female from China and the other a male from the United States, employed duoethnography methodology to utilize our different positionalities as researchers in our description, analysis and interpretation of the data. As the exemplary teachers in our study illustrate, education needs to be culturally responsive, socially just, well-integrated, and empo...
Inclusion is a fundamental aspect of social studies education in general and democratic education... more Inclusion is a fundamental aspect of social studies education in general and democratic education in particular. Inclusion is especially important when we consider the possibilities for transnational civic culture and education. The theoretical framework of this study is based upon concepts of positionality, identity, and belonging as they are related to student understanding of communities. A dual-language, third-grade classroom provided the site for this ethnographic study. Data included participant observations, interviews with the teacher and students, and artifacts of student work. Findings illustrate how the students in the study understood the complexity of their identities at a young age and how the teacher used culturally sustaining pedagogy to foster a third space where this understanding was encouraged.
The rise of authoritarianism and exclusionary nationalism has shown a critical need to teach stud... more The rise of authoritarianism and exclusionary nationalism has shown a critical need to teach students how to build, maintain and participate in democratic communities. This requires students to understand how authoritarianism and nationalism exclude people and perspectives in communities. While inclusionary nationalism can create an identity that unites people, we focus upon the divisive form of nationalism that is exclusionary. This article first describes the context for critical education for democracy in the face of authoritarianism and nationalism. We follow with a conceptual analysis of critical education for democracy. This involves the ways that students can identify antidemocratic discourses in order to promote democratic discourses. The model that we present relies upon student discourse analysis and elements of greeting, rhetoric and narrative for increasing inclusion in democratic communities. We conclude with illustrations of classroom inquiries, discussions and deliber...
International Journal of Literacy, Culture, and Language Education, 2012
Curriculum contentions are cultural struggles. As an illustration, we examine contention surround... more Curriculum contentions are cultural struggles. As an illustration, we examine contention surrounding which and how languages are taught in the curriculum. We (the authors) locate this struggle within our positionalities, as a departure for ouranalysis of competing ideologies surrounding language and curriculum. We use a dialogical methodology to examine tensions between monocultural and multicultural ideologies. An imaginary dialogue between us, Hirsch, and Bakhtin provides an illustration. Based upon the struggles located in the bodies of the authors and the imaginary dialogue of two cultural theorists, we conclude that a monological curriculum represents the domination of one cultural group over others rather than the pedagogical and social rationales provided by opponents of multilingual education.
Abstract This article discusses a case study that explored the potential of nonfiction graphic no... more Abstract This article discusses a case study that explored the potential of nonfiction graphic novels to develop pre-service teachers' understanding of agency in a social studies methods course. White pre-service teachers were aske`d to read one graphic novel and then add frames, re-narrate frames, and reflect on their decisions. The positionalities of researchers, who are White males, and participants were part of our analysis. The researchers found that pre-service teachers made revisions to the graphic novels to change the historical actors' decisions: within the constraints of the historical situation's circumstances; to better fit their own ethical framework; and to critique the author's interpretation of the historical event and the amount of agency assigned to certain historical actors. We also reported findings related to shifts in understanding related to positionality. The pre-service teachers' revisions demonstrated their understanding of historical actors' ability to make choices; however, for most pre-service teachers those decisions were limited by, and insignificant in comparison to, the constraints of societal structures. Most pre-service teachers viewed these structures as operating outside of the realm of ethics that they used to articulate and identify agency, and thus, these structures were not responsive to changes in individual or collective agency. Implications are provided for social studies teacher educators.
Banks (1994) names prejudice reduction as one of five dimensions of multicultural education. Alth... more Banks (1994) names prejudice reduction as one of five dimensions of multicultural education. Although children develop prejudicial beliefs, attitudes, and values at young ages, research demonstrates that when multicultural knowledge and values are combined with intergroup contact, prejudice is often reduced. In this article, I connect multiple literatures in order to present an overarching picture of prejudice and its reduction in classrooms. First, I describe some negative impacts of prejudice and how prejudice develops at very young ages. Second, utilizing another of Banks’s dimensions of multicultural education, I describe the knowledge construction process as a necessary factor in prejudice reduction. Finally, intergroup contact theory and complex instruction are described as a guide for reducing prejudice in classrooms.
Social networks and communities are rapidly expanding and changing due to the accelerating pace o... more Social networks and communities are rapidly expanding and changing due to the accelerating pace of globalization. In this article, we examine new possibilities for the reform of curriculum and educational research in a way that is responsive to increasingly multicultural and global communities. Drawing on literatures in the areas of multicultural, global, and civic education, we conducted a critical qualitative case study of four elementary school teachers. The teachers, two in the United States and two in the United Kingdom, are known to be exemplary at synthesizing multicultural, global, and civic education. We, the two authors, one a female from China and the other a male from the United States, employed duoethnography methodology to utilize our different positionalities as researchers in our description, analysis and interpretation of the data. As the exemplary teachers in our study illustrate, education needs to be culturally responsive, socially just, well-integrated, and empo...
Inclusion is a fundamental aspect of social studies education in general and democratic education... more Inclusion is a fundamental aspect of social studies education in general and democratic education in particular. Inclusion is especially important when we consider the possibilities for transnational civic culture and education. The theoretical framework of this study is based upon concepts of positionality, identity, and belonging as they are related to student understanding of communities. A dual-language, third-grade classroom provided the site for this ethnographic study. Data included participant observations, interviews with the teacher and students, and artifacts of student work. Findings illustrate how the students in the study understood the complexity of their identities at a young age and how the teacher used culturally sustaining pedagogy to foster a third space where this understanding was encouraged.
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