The following links provide information about my scholarship.

Welcome to the entry page of the scholarship section of my portfolio. This page provides an overview and rationale of my presentations, publications, and grant activity; the above links provide evidence of my scholarship.

To begin to understand my research interests and actions, it is important to know that there are three areas of research central to my scholarly agenda. They are:
1. Preservice Teachers' Social Justice Education
2. Teaching Methods that Promote Diversity Understanding
3. Equity and Achievement in Inclusive Elementary Classrooms

As a teacher educator, I am an advocate for underrepresented voices in educational settings. I am interested in ways to prepare future and in-service teachers to use teaching methods and educational materials that ensure multiple perspectives are well represented and understood by elementary students. I believe that it is essential that I work to educate preservice teachers to understand that, unless they become aware of the many ways that people are diverse, there is a strong likelihood that they will teach curricula through a dominant cultural perspective. This has many implications that may not serve all students that we educate. I work to portray my scholarly work in the classroom and through research and publications. I believe that preservice teachers need to gain awareness of diversity issues in schools because it is through understanding all students in our classrooms that we will improve student achievement.

In the Presentations section of my portfolio, I have included a listing of papers I have presented at conferences. My papers' topics reflect my scholarly agenda I've discussed above. For example, my paper titled, Learning From General Elementary Educators' Experiences in Inclusive Classrooms reports on a study that I conducted to reveal how general educators who had no prior education on teaching students with disabilities learned to teach them in their classrooms. In this paper, I bring to the forefront an understanding that much more needs to be done to prepare teachers to work in inclusive contexts. Perhaps more importantly, in the paper I also argue that inclusive education is a necessary social justice and preservice teachers would benefit from learning how to teach in inclusive contexts by working alongside veteran inclusive educators to learn how to create equitable learning environments and opportunities for all students they will educate.

I have worked to widen the scope of my scholarly agenda to focus on topics of diversity beyond ability differences that are highlighted in this section of my portfolio. This is best exemplified in the Grant Awards section of my portfolio. I conducted a study that reflects this shift in my scholarly agenda titled, Understanding Preservice Teachers' Perspectives About Diversity. This study was reviewed and approved by the Internal Review Board in February 2005. This study explored preservice teachers understandings about diversity because current research called for the importance of teacher educators learning more about ways to better prepare preservice teachers to effectively educate all students in their future classrooms. I presented this paper at the American Association of Colleges for Teacher Education annual meeting in February 2007. Building on the findings from this study, I wrote and was granted a 2006 Summer Research Fellowship titled, Exploring Elementary Teachers' Preparedness for Teaching in Diverse Classrooms, to better understand inservice teachers' perspectives on how well they believe they were prepared to teach the diverse student population of today. Findings from this study had immediate practical implications as I was able to assist in writing our department's new curriculum and incorporated findings into the selected topics for two new courses (EDU 379: Inquiry into Curriculum, Technology and Teaching and EDU 479: Integrated Curriculum Planning, Technology and Teaching). Our new department curriculum started to be implemented in the Fall 2007 semester and I was assigned to teach one of the sections of EDU 379 in Fall 2008.

In the Fall 2007 semester, I was award an external grant through the New York Higher Education Center for Systems Change. It is a small sub-awarded grant (~$24,000/yr.), funded through Syracuse University with external funds coming from the New York State Department of Education and the United States Department of Education. The grant provided me with an opportunity to serve as a co-liaison and work toward strengthening preservice teaching programs to (1) have teachers be better prepared to teach in inclusive classrooms and (2) to facilitate inclusive education knowledge acquisition for inservice teachers and support personnel in the mid-New York State area. The grant activity was renewed in the Fall 2008 and in Fall 2009 semesters. To better understand the activities that were planned for this grant, please view my grant application by clicking here. As a co-liaison, I work to bring together interested professors, researchers, teachers, support staff and others interested from institutions, schools, NYSED staff, and other regional support office staff in the mid-state region to discuss issues central to inclusive education practices. I am proud of this activity and consider it to be one of the most important tasks I was involved with during the first 6 years of my employment at SUNY Cortland.

In the Fall 2010 semester, I was awarded an external grant through the United States Department of Education's Office of Special Education Programs (OSEP). It is a large award (~1.5 million), which is the 2nd largest external grant in the history of SUNY Cortland. With Dr. John Cottone as Principal Investigator and Dr. David Smukler (Foundations and Social Advocacy) as co-Principal Investigator with me, we will collaborate to facilitate curricula enhancements to plan for and create additional pathways for childhood education teacher candidates to become dually certified in Special Education and for special education teacher candidates to become dually certified in Childhood Education. This grant will provide many opportunities for faculty in both departments to participate in professional development while strengthening curricula for all teacher candidates to acquire knowledge, skills and dispositions for preparing our teacher candidates to teach elementary students with disabilities. Please click here to view our grant narrative. I am looking forward to the collaborative work that will come from this grant opportunity.