Teaching

Undergraduate CourseS

DePauw University

Advanced Topics in Education Studies: Education, Empire, Eco-crisis, and Ethics

Course design based on my research on Empire, political economy, contemporary theories in education, and climate change through a global studies lens; received approval for a one-time Global Learning designation. (upper-level elective; face-to-face)

Advanced Topics in Education Studies: Educational Futures

Course design based on my published work on cultural politics, aesthetics, and educational futures. (upper-level elective; face-to-face)

Advanced Topics in Education Studies: Feelings, Things, and Bodies in Education

Course design based on my research related to new materialism and cultural studies. (upper-level elective; face-to-face)

Critical Multiculturalism

This course explores the cultural foundations of education in the US and globally. We investigate current challenges engaged by critical multiculturalism while attending to sociopolitical contexts. Particular attention is paid to curriculum, education policy, and schooling systems worldwide as sites of political and cultural contestation. Received approval for one-time Global Learning and Social Sciences designations (face-to-face)

Education and Social Change

Examines interconnected historical, political, economic, and sociocultural issues related to education’s function as a catalyst for social change—for control as well as transformation. Critically analyzes the role of education and schooling in shaping society through identification of key debates, values, and attitudes. Emphasizes the deliberation on major contemporary problems such as educational reform and policy to determine outcomes, including impacts on teaching practices. (face-to-face)

Foundations of Education

Intro-level course that focuses on the core framework of the Education Studies program. (Core course; face-to-face)

Deconstructing Difference: Education and Society

Through the lens of education, this class examines how systems of power and privilege pathologize difference and diversity and, alternatively, the approaches of resistance that enact liberating practices by engaging in a productive and affirmative power of difference. We pay particular attention to the ways in which education, broadly considered, both actively and passively participates in maintaining power, oppression, and privilege in the United States. (Core course; Face-to-face)

Educational Research

Fulfills the Oral Communication (S) competency graduation requirement (Core course; face-to-face)

Education Studies Senior Seminar, capstone course

Fulfills the Oral Communication (S) competency graduation requirement (Core course; face-to-face)

University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa

Education in American Society

This course examines forces, ideologies, and structures that inform attitudes and trajectories of education in contemporary American society. Education, broadly considered, has historical, socio-cultural, philosophical, economic, and political influences. In 2022, I designed a writing intensive version of this course and received instructor-based approval from University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa Office of General Education. The course also fulfilled the contemporary ethical issues focus requirement. (Upper level; online and face-to-face)

Introduction to Multicultural Education

This course takes an interdisciplinary and global approach. Through group discussions, lectures, writing assignments, and reflection, students will practice an inquisitive learning style that emphasizes critical thinking, curiosity, and creativity to understand the nuances of multicultural education. We will draw upon a variety of materials including films, literature, relevant recent events, contemporary scholarship, and popular culture to untangle the different attitudes to multicultural education as well as the underlying motivations informing these perspectives. (Upper level; synchronous online)

Graduate Courses

Foundations of Educational Theory (University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa)

Questions of “what is education”, “for whom is education”, and “who is an ideal learner” are intricately entangled with how education is conceived and enacted. Discerning these embedded entanglements is a key focus of this course, which will explore assumptions guiding contemporary educational discourse—meaning the rules that determine what and how we communicate—as well as related practices. Doing so will require critical engagement with the philosophies and theories informing those assumptions. 

Course material is organized around several themes: knowledge and learning, assessment and the body in education, infrastructure and the commons, study, and sensations and pedagogy. We will begin the course by examining the intellectual foundations that inform what it means to know and to learn. As we will see with subsequent texts, this raises multiple concerns that are addressed by approaches including critical theory, cultural studies, philosophy, media theory, critical pedagogy, feminist theory, political theory, aesthetics and affect theory, and curriculum theory. Through these themes and materials, we will encounter questions of being and knowing that are central to making informed and ethical educational decisions from the classroom to policy and beyond. 

(Online and face-to-face)

Pedagogy

My pedagogy emphasizes three areas: critical thinking, creativity, and curiosity. I approach these areas in my teaching and research by encouraging an ability to think critically about educational issues, cultivating creativity to understand these issues, and finally, engaging curiosity about understanding their impacts. For example, my teaching highlights personal experience and popular culture as productive avenues to critically examine educational issues and to make the philosophies informing these issues more accessible.