Culture and teaching
Culture and Teaching (CaT) engages the study of education as a cultural phenomenon. As a student in CaT, you will study a range of educational processes that take place both in and beyond the borders of schools, and explore alternative epistemologies and pedagogies. While CaT primarily engages schools and schooling, it also attends to families, neighborhoods, and international communities.
CaT is a politically committed program. Faculty and students are dedicated to seeking better understandings of issues pertaining to equity and social justice in both research and teaching. The track is interdisciplinary and collaborative, so your work as a student will encompass many different approaches, methods, and perspectives.
Some of CaT's courses focus on the ways in which teachers are prepared to teach; engage in ongoing professional development; and develop their own personal and professional identities within collegial communities. Other courses examine the salience of understanding white racial identity for pedagogy and social change; as well as the implications of globalization and immigration for teaching, learning, and curriculum. Still other courses explore popular culture and media in relation to contemporary critical theory and teaching practices. “Culture" in CaT includes thinking about "high" and "popular" cultures, the cultures of teaching and the cultures of learning, and how our responses to all influence and are influenced by everyday meanings and practices. “Teaching” in CaT includes thinking about how, as educational leaders and researchers in and outside of the classroom, we might take up radical democratic forms of life with our fellow learners
Degree program information in culture and teaching
Ph.D.: for experienced professionals who want to develop advanced research, knowledge, and leadership skills in their chosen field
Faculty
- Timothy J. Lensmire
- Bic Ngo
- Mistilina Sato
- Thom Swiss
Timothy Lensmire
Associate Professor
612/625-2092
lensmire@umn.edu
Areas of Interest
Exploring the teaching and learning of writing as a form of democratic living, and how white people learn to be white in our white supremacist society.
Bic Ngo
Associate Professor
612/625-7520
bcngo@umn.edu
Areas of Interest
Exploration of understandings and influences of “culture” and “difference” on immigrant students' education, and the implications for how we theorize immigrant identity, culturally relevant pedagogy, and anti-oppressive education.
Mistilina Sato
Associate Professor
612/625-7793
msato@umn.edu
Areas of Interest
Teachers’ processes of developing their practices, leadership, personal and professional identities, and collegial relationships, practical philosophy, assessment for learning integrated in instructional practices
Thom Swiss
Professor
612/625-7509
swiss@umn.edu
Areas of Interest
Interdisciplinarity in research and teaching, popular culture, digital media, creative writing
Student profiles
Aaron Hokanson
Read about Aaron on the Culture and Teaching blog!
Sarah Hansen
Read about Sarah on the Culture and Teaching blog!
Holly Christie
Read about Holly on the Culture and Teaching blog!
Revised June 2010
