Culture and teaching - Ph.D.

While some Ph.D. students enrolled in CAT choose to develop specialization around particular subject matters, others may choose to focus on issues common across disciplinary boundaries. Students draw on interdisciplinary perspectives and engage in a variety of research methods to more deeply understand notions of being in the world, conflict, pluralism and unity, and praxis and action as they relate to educational endeavors, as well as explore ways to improve practice, assessment, leadership, and community engagement.

Students enrolled in other tracks within the Department of Curriculum and Instruction may also choose to pursue a supporting program in CAT. CAT prepares students for positions not only as faculty members in higher education, but also for leadership roles in local, national, and international communities.

Faculty

Timothy J. Lensmire
Tim’s teaching, research, and writing are animated by commitments to and hopes for radical democracy. His past research focused on the teaching of writing in schools. Drawing on Mikhail Bakhtin and John Dewey, among others, he criticized and reconstructed traditional and progressive conceptions of the teacher's role, student voice, and community in the writing classroom. His current research and writing are grounded in critical white studies and focused on an ethnographic interview study he completed recently in a small rural community. The goal of this work is to build descriptions of, and theoretical insights about, the racial identities of white people, as part of a larger pedagogical and political project concerned with race and social change.

Bic Ngo
Bic’s research examines how and why schools and classrooms advantage some groups over others, as well as the ways schools and classrooms are critical sites for social and cultural transformation. She employs ethnographic methodology and engages critical, cultural and feminist theories to explore the implications of globalization and immigration for teaching, learning and curriculum. Her work has explored issues of culture and inequality in the education of Hmong American and Lao American students and families. Currently, her research seeks to explicate the impact of culture change on Hmong students' education, and the implications for how we theorize immigrant identity and anti-oppressive education.

Mistilina Sato
Misty’s research seeks to better understand the ways in which teachers, as people and as professionals, engage in processes of developing their practice, leadership, personal and professional identities, and their collegial relationships and communities. The theoretical lens she brings to her research is one of practical reasoning. Practical reasoning recognizes the intellectual process of taking everyday action through a process of deliberation, foregrounds the local and timely nature of action, and emphasizes the personal identity of the teacher. Recent studies have focused on teacher leadership and the teacher change process, specifically in the context of science education, National Board Certification, and everyday or formative assessment integrated in the teachers’ instructional practice.

Thom Swiss
Thom’s writing and teaching focus on popular culture in general and digital media, creative writing, and popular music in particular. Drawing on research practices in cultural and media studies, he’s interested in the contexts in which writing takes place and the possibilities for new literacies that are emerging from new technologies. His courses typically include texts from a range of disciplines and perspectives. Thom joined the education faculty in 2006. Previously he taught at the University of Iowa and as professor of mass communication at the University of Minnesota.

Student profile

Jill Leet-Otley

“I am currently in my third year and am delighted with the intellectual curiosity and rigor of my colleagues and professors.”

“This is an excellent opportunity for me to learn first hand the ins and outs of doing cutting edge qualitative research and will certainly inform the research that I do in the future.”

I am a part time doctoral student, balancing my studies with my rich family life in Rochester, MN. While I lived in North Carolina and Massachusetts, I taught students with learning disabilities and emotional and behavioral problems in both public and private school. I am currently in my third year and am delighted with the intellectual curiosity and rigor of my colleagues and professors. Although many people seem to think graduate school must be a chore to be endured, I consider it a privilege.

My undergraduate experience was instrumental in shaping how I view the world, how I think, and even how I am compelled to act. The religion major at Williams College was an interdisciplinary program integrating post-modern theories with the studies of religion, philosophy, race, gender, and culture. We read everything from Derrida to Kristeva to Hegel to Foucault. It is a natural progression for me then to be enrolled in the Culture and Teaching track at the University of Minnesota.

Currently, I am interested in critical race theory and critical white studies, and am heavily influenced and inspired by the scholarship of Dr. Bic Ngo and my adviser, Dr. Tim Lensmire. I am beginning to realize that race, as I previously had envisioned it, is even more problematic than most white people are willing to admit. How we go about thinking of Other or difference (or as Derrida would say – differance) and teaching that in the 21st century will, I think, be fundamental to how we solve some of the inequities in our society and around the globe.

I am currently working with Dr. Ngo in which I have the opportunity to do some hands-on research transcribing interviews, observing in the field, collecting artifacts, and coding and analyzing data. My work is part of her ethnographic study on Hmong culture and culture change in a St. Paul high school. This is an excellent opportunity for me to learn first hand the ins and outs of doing cutting edge qualitative research and will certainly inform the research that I do in the future.

Course requirements

November 2006