Faculty

- Pronouns she, her, her, hers, herself
- Title
- Associate Professor
- Division Social Sciences Division
- Department
- Education Department
- Phone 831-459-1893
- Website
- Office Location
- McHenry Library, 3161
- Office Hours By appointment
- Mail Stop Education Department
- Mailing Address
- 1156 High Street
- Santa Cruz CA 95064
- Faculty Areas of Expertise Education, Labor and Social Movements, Immigration, Sociology
- Courses Education 60: Introduction to Educational Issues, Education 160: Theories of School Reform, Education 182: The American Teacher, Education 190: Undergraduate Senior Capstone Seminar, Education 235: Introduction to Educational Inquiry, Education 237: Qualitative Research Methods, Education 250: Teaching and Teachers, Education 277ABC: Proseminar, Teachers' Work Research Group
- Advisees, Grad Students, Researchers Riley Collins, Micah N Card, Esra Bozkurt, Cheralen Arroyo Valdez
Summary of Expertise
COVID-19 as a Context for Teachers' Work
Teachers and Teachers' Work
Concpetions of the teaching profession
Conditions of teacher commitment
Composition of teacher workforce
Transnational teacher migration
Schools as workplaces for teachers
Research Interests
My goal as a scholar is to advance and develop knowledge related to teachers’ professional commitment, conceptions of teacher professionalism and the composition of the teacher workforce. I am interested in schools as workplaces for teachers and the reciprocal relationship between educational policy and teachers’ orientations to their work. My work seeks to unpack notions of teachers’ work held by individuals, professional communities, organizations, and policy makers. I am interested in the consequences of the interactions of those competing conceptions for creating and maintaining a professional workforce.
Biography, Education and Training
Ph.D. Education, U.C. Berkeley
M.Ed. Curriculum & Instruction, Secondary English
University of Massachusetts, Amherst, MA
B.A. English Literature
University of Massachusetts, Amherst, MA
Honors, Awards and Grants
- Educator's Room 2025 Top International Educator Award
- Sloan Center for Work and Family Post doctoral Fellow
- Atlantic Public Policy Fellow
- Labor Employment Research Fund Grant
- Smith Richardson Foundation Policy Fellow
- National Science Foundation Noyce Grant
- UCSC Excellence in Teaching Award
- National Science Foundation Research Grant
- Center for Social Transformation Research Grant
Selected Publications
Books:
- Going the Distance: The Teaching Profession in a Post-COVID World (2025) Harvard Education Press
- Migrant Teachers: How U.S. Schools import Labor (2014) Harvard University Press
Selected News articles & OpEds
Selected Journal Articles & Chapters:
- Specifying Hybrid Models of Teachers’ Work During COVID-19
- Not Remotely Familiar: How COVID-19 is Reshaping Teachers’ Work and the Implications for Teacher Education
- What’s in a Calling: Unpacking the Call to Teach Controversy
- Seeking to Stay: Job search process and teacher retention
- The Teacher Workforce and Problems of Educational Equity
- The Evolution of New Teacher Induction Policy: Support, Specificity and Autonomy
- Expanding Teacher Work Roles: resource for retention or recipe for overwork
Selected Recordings
EdWeek: A Seat at the Table What Have We Have Learned from Teachers During the Pandemic.
National Academies of Science, Engineering, and Medicine. “Being a teacher: The Experience of the Last Year" at online workshop Teaching & the Teacher Workforce Amid the Struggles of COVID-19 and for Racial Justice.
UC Santa Cruz University Forum: Suddenly Distant and Still in Flux: The Implications of COVID-19 for K12 Teachers’ Work and Schooling