Areas of Research

CREATE faculty and graduate students are currently working in the following areas: 

• Informal language learning.
• Teacher preparation and professional development for writing instruction.  
• Teacher preparation in global contexts including Greece, Hong Kong, and Singapore.
• The application of Progressive early childhood philosophies in Hong Kong.
• The cultural, linguistic, and policy considerations required for the translation of the Reggio Emilia Approach to American schools.
• Systemic forces in the early lives of incarcerated Black men and women.
• The experiences of refugees with young children.
• Classroom power dynamics and the enactment of inquiry methods of instruction.
• The professional pathways of teachers of children in kindergarten through third grade. 
• Increasing representation of marginalized groups in museum exhibits.
• Supporting families' conversations about science in out-of-school contexts

Among other sites, faculty and graduate students are currently working in collaboration with:

• University Primary School
• University of Illinois Writing Project
• Yew Chung International School of Hong Kong
  
• Chor Hang Educational Research Institute
• Krannert Art Museum
• Russell Woods Forest Preserve

Quick Bios

Catherine Dornfeld Tissenbaum, Ph.D., uses mixed-methods approaches (e.g,. Design-Based Research, Participatory Design Research) to design scaffolds for learning and collaboration in formal and informal learning environments. She is especially interested in supporting racial equity in museums and other out-of-school contexts.

Giselle Martinez Negrette, Ph.D., employs qualitative methods to study the intricate processes that multilingual children engage in as they use language to enact and negotiate their identities and interactions within tenuous social and linguistic intersections.

Rachel McMillian, Ph.D., is a curriculum theorist and educational researcher whose work broadly explores two intersecting avenues: Black Education and Critical Prison Studies. Through counterstorytelling, she focuses on 1) the schooling and educational experiences of Black people who were (wrongfully) incarcerated as children/youth and, 2) Black liberatory education and curriculum that occurs within spaces of confinement and enclosure.

Dr. Asif Wilson's research explores justice-centered pedagogies in P-20 school spaces. He studies the forces that influence these pedagogies and how they are enacted.