TEACHING PHILOSOPHY:

Although the issues facing science education are vast and ‘macro’ in many senses, I strongly believe that the micro-moments of science teaching and learning are truly profound and important to transforming the broader landscape.  My experience working with children began in 1991 and spans both formal and informal learning environments in both traditional and nontraditional forms.  These experiences include teaching elementary level science, instructing the Science Math and Related Technology (SMART) program with Girls Inc., co-teaching in urban high school chemistry classrooms, and working closely with high school student researchers in expanded capacities within schools and on university campuses. I have also worked directly with high school teacher researchers and school administrator researchers from neighborhood, charter, and magnet schools as a mentor, co-teacher, and co-researcher assisting in the development of their classroom research studies, providing methodological and theoretical guidance, and in one case directing the complete dissertation process. Additionally, when in the classroom with teacher researchers, I have emphasized collaboration and collective responsibility by actively co-participating in science lessons, circulating the room, answering student questions, and teaching concepts in small groups, as needed.  Research meetings with the teachers and student researchers often took the form of cogenerative dialogues, or collective conversations in which all members are asked to accept responsibility for understanding the classroom activities, with a commitment to blur power differentials amongst the researchers.  In those spaces, we built common theoretical language and developed analytical skills such as video microanalysis.

During my time at Washington University in St. Louis, I have had the opportunity to teach a wide array of courses consisting of both undergraduate and graduate students that span multiple areas. For example, I teach methods courses and curriculum and instruction courses in the areas of science and elementary education.  In these courses, I enact teaching approaches that emphasize the recursive interconnected nature of theory, research, and practice and allow pre-service and practicing teachers to access theoretical and practical resources that can empower their own sense of agency.  I provide theoretical lenses to help the teachers develop tools for: (1) conceptualizing teaching and learning in terms of cultural production and reproduction, (2) viewing schools and classrooms in terms of ideological, material, and symbolic structures, (3) considering the emotional dimensions of the classroom, including teacher-student and student-student interaction dynamics, and (4) examining issues of identity. These theoretical perspectives are deeply embedded in praxis as I consistently augment course reading materials with video vignettes emerging out of urban science classrooms in which research was conducted by myself or by teacher researchers with whom I have worked in the past.

I also teach courses such as The American School, Science and Politics of Testing,  Power and Conflict in Mathematics and Science Education, and Video Microanalysis: An Insightful Tool For Urban School
Research.  In all of my courses, I consistently ask the students to rethink the status quo and to expand their notions of teaching and learning. I am committed to presenting education from a sociocultural perspective with a strong emphasis on urban environments, and I actively engage the students through discussion, debate, video analysis projects, and small group activities. Finally, I believe very strongly in the importance of viewing my students through non-deficit lenses – valuing their input and honoring their perceptions – while working toward course goals and in efforts to establish a sense of community.