Resume

• 2006

  National Association of Early Childhood Teacher Educators

• 2005

  Association for the Education of Young Children

  Chair

  Early Education/Child Development Special Interest Group

  American Educational Research Association

• 2001

  Member

  American Educational Research Association

• 2000

  PhD

  Curriculum and Instruction; Early Childhood Education

• 1997

  Member

  Phi Delta Kappa

  Member

  National Association for the Education of Young Children

  National Association of Early Childhood Teacher Educators

  Regents’ Outstanding Teaching Award

  The University of Texas System Board of Regents

  National Association of Early Childhood Teacher Educators Foundation Research Award

  National Association of Early Childhood Teacher Educators Foundation

  Award for Exemplary Research in Teaching and Teacher Education

  Division K

  Teaching and Teacher Education of the American Educational Research Association

  National Association of Early Childhood Teacher Educators Journal of Early Childhood Teacher Education Article of the Year

  Winning Article: Brown

  C. P.

  & Englehardt

  J. (2016). Conceptions of and early childhood educators’ \nexperiences in early childhood professional development programs: A qualitative metasynthesis. Journal of Early Childhood Teacher Education

  37 (3)

  216-244.\n

  National Association of Early Childhood Teacher Educators

  Outstanding Journal of Early Childhood Teacher Education Journal Article: Honorable Mention

  National Association of Early Childhood Teacher Educators/Taylor Francis

  Early Research Career Award

  Early Education/Child Development Special Interest Group of the American Educational Research Association

• 1995

  M.A.

  Curriculum and Instruction; Early Childhood Education

• 1989

  B.A.

  Philosophy

  Early Childhood Program Development

  Social Contexts of Early Childhood Education

  Early Childhood Education Programs

  Critical Perspectives in Early Childhood Education

  Case Study Research

  Curriculum theories for pre-kindergarten and kindergarten

  Introduction to Systems of Human Inquiry

• The College of Education - Christopher P. Brown

  Ph.D.

  Christopher is an Associate Professor of Curriculum and Instruction in Early Childhood Education and a Fellow in the Elizabeth Glenadine Gibb Teaching Fellowship in Education. He currently serves as the Program Coordinator and Graduate Advisor for the Early Childhood Education Program Area.

  The College of Education - Christopher P. Brown

  Ph.D.

  Educational Leadership

  Curriculum Assessment

  Educational Assessment

  Program Evaluation

  Teacher Mentoring

  Education Reform

  Teacher Training

  Case Studies

  Curriculum Design

  Elementary Education

  Qualitative Research

  Curriculum Development

  Early Childhood Education

  Editing

  Educational Research

  Program Management

  Academic Advising

  RIGOROUS DAP in the early years: From theory to practice.

  Brian Mowry

  In this day and age of high-stakes academic testing and accountability

  children are expected to know more and more at a younger and younger age. Early childhood educators struggle to help children meet academic expectations while teaching in a developmentally appropriate way. They struggle to explain to stakeholders—administrators

  policy makers

  families

  and even colleagues—why and how developmentally appropriate teaching practices are best for children’s learning

  and why and how embracing each child’s individual unique strengths and personal experiences improves the child’s ability to succeed in school. \n\nRIGOROUS DAP in the Early Years: From Theory to Practice provides teachers with a roadmap for teaching that helps children meet academic expectations and maintains focus on the appropriate development of the whole child. \n\nRIGOUROUS DAP includes:\n\nConsideration of the current context of publicly funded early childhood education by focusing on practices that meet the needs of individual children\nAddresses issues created by testing and accountability\nIncorporates culturally relevant and sustaining practices\nStrategies for early educators to engage stakeholders in and outside the early childhood classroom in conversations about how to educate young children for school success\n\nThe eleven practices comprising the construct are: \n\nReaching all children\nIntegrating content areas\nGrowing as a community\nOffering choices\nRevisiting new content\nOffering challenges\nUnderstanding each learner\nSeeing the whole child\n\nDifferentiating instruction\nAssessing constantly\nPushing every child forward

  RIGOROUS DAP in the early years: From theory to practice.

  Lan

  Y. C.

  A qualitative metasynthesis comparing U.S. teachers' conceptions of school readiness prior to and after the implementation of NCLB.

  Issues of standardization

  student achievement

  and diversity have dramatically altered teaching within early childhood programs across the United States. This has created a situation in which teacher educators need to assist practicing and preservice teachers working in these contexts with formulating instructional responses that address policymakers’ high-stakes demands

  take into account the best practices of early childhood

  and attend to children’s linguistic

  cultural

  socioeconomic

  and political worlds. This article addresses this issue by examining findings from a qualitative study of a professional development course within a large urban school district for prekindergarten and kindergarten teachers. In the course

  the teachers were asked to engage in action research projects that pursued learning experiences with their students reflecting issues central to their lives in and/or outside their classrooms. Analyzing and interpreting their experiences sheds light on how teacher educators can support practicing and preservice teachers in responding to the governmental

  institutional

  and local demands on their teaching while attempting to formulate learning experiences that reflect their students’ sociocultural worlds.

  Struggling to overcome the state’s prescription for practice: A study of a sample of early educators’ professional development and action-research projects in a high-stakes teaching context.

  Yoon

  Y.

  Weber

  N. B.

  This article documents the pedagogical and practical struggles of a sample of early educators in a large urban school district in the USA who engaged in a professional development course which offered them alternative conceptions of teaching that critically questioned the norms and practices of their high-stakes neo-liberal early education system. Examining the evolution of some of these teachers’ conceptions and practices illuminates the challenges that exist in attempting to address culturally relevant issues with students in a highly scripted and surveilled teaching context. It also reveals three key issues that early educators

  teacher educators

  and those who advocate for early childhood education should consider when developing and/or enacting alternative conceptions of teaching in similar neo-liberal early education environments.

  Reluctantly governed: The struggles of early educators in a professional development course that challenged their teaching in a high-stakes neoliberal early education context.

  While many within early childhood and early childhood teacher education continue to call for early educators to engage in activities that attend to children’s sociocultural worlds

  practicing and preservice teachers often ignore such practices and make instructional decisions that address the issues of standardization and increased academic achievement. This has created a situation in which teacher educators need to assist practicing and preservice teachers with developing instructional responses that address demands of their local teaching context while taking into account issues that reflect children’s sociocultural worlds. This article addresses this issue. It examines the findings from a qualitative case study that investigated how a sample of graduate students made sense of an assignment that asked them to research

  develop

  and implement learning activities with their students that reflected issues central to their lives in and/or outside their classrooms. Analyzing and interpreting these teachers’ sensemaking illuminates possible practices that teacher educators can offer preservice and classroom teachers in formulating context-based instructional strategies that reflect their students’ sociocultural worlds.

  Putting theories into action: A case of study of how early educators made sense of teaching lessons that reflected their students’ sociocultural worlds.

  Brian Mowry

  Using testimonio to bring children’s worlds into a standardized teaching context: An example of culturally relevant teaching in early childhood education.

  Nancy File

  Mary B. McMullen

  The Wiley Handbook of Early Childhood Care and Education is a comprehensive resource that offers a review of the historical aspects

  best practices

  and the future directions of the field. With contributions from noted experts in the field

  the book contains 30 interdisciplinary essays that explore in-depth the central issues of early childhood care and education. The handbook presents a benchmark reference to the basic knowledge

  effective approaches to use with young children

  curriculum design

  professional development

  current policies

  and other critical information.\n\nThe expert contributors address the myriad complex policy and practice issues that are most relevant today. The essays provide insight into topics such as child development and diversity

  the sociocultural process of child development

  the importance of the home environment in the lives of young children

  early childhood special education

  teaching and learning literacy

  and much more. This important resource:\n\nPresents a comprehensive synopsis of the major components of the field of early childhood care and education\nContains contributions from leading scholars

  researchers

  and experts in the field\nOffers the foundational knowledge and practices for working with young children\nPuts the focus on how early childhood works and presents an understanding of culture as a foundational component of both child development and early childhood education\nWritten for academic scholars

  researchers

  advocates

  policymakers

  and students of early childhood care and education

  The Wiley Handbook of Early Childhood Care and Education is a comprehensive resource to the major issues for dealing with childhood care and education with contributions from noted scholars in the field.

  Wiley handbook of early childhood care and education.

  The call by policymakers

  education stakeholders

  and families for children to enter school ‘ready’ has led to numerous empirical studies that seek to identify how children and their families are or are not prepared for school. In the United States

  this empirical work tends to identify particular children and their families ‘at-risk’ for school success and often seeks out ways to intervene so that such risks are addressed. Absent from this work is an understanding of how families conceptualise school readiness

  and how those understandings influence their conceptions of whether or not their own children are ready for school. Such work could assist educators and other school personnel in supporting families and their children as they enter their programmes. This article examines this issue by presenting findings from a qualitative metasynthesis of studies that investigated how families conceptualised school readiness. Analysing

  synthesising

  and interpreting their conceptions of school readiness offers the chance to consider how early childhood stakeholders can be ready for families as they enter their programmes as well as support their efforts in readying their children for school.

  Understanding families’ conceptions of school readiness in the United States: A qualitative metasynthesis.

  The public education system in the United States continues to struggle in educating children of diverse backgrounds. Many have addressed this issue by documenting how certain practices teach children particular types of knowledge and skills. This developmental focus on what should be happening to children of diverse backgrounds tends to ignore the complexities of the communities in which they live

  and by doing so

  it can perpetuate the status quo. To address this issue

  this article examined a professional development course within a large urban school district for preKindergarten and Kindergarten teachers. In the course

  the teachers were asked to reconceptualize their pedagogical practices with their students and engage in learning activities in their classrooms that attended to the children’s sociocultural worlds. Analyzing the experiences of a sample of participants who participated in this course provides insight into how teacher educators can assist practicing and preservice teachers address the opportunities and challenges that exist when teaching children of diverse backgrounds through culturally relevant practices that prepare them for success in their high-stakes schooling environments and local communities.

  Working with practicing teachers in a high-stakes teaching context to rethink their pedagogical

  Research Findings: Having practicing or preservice early educators employing iPads and their apps as part of their practices with young children in high-stakes teaching contexts is a challenging process. The case study examined in this article further unpacks this complexity by investigating how incorporating iPads into their high-stakes field placements might have affected a sample of preservice teachers’ figuring of how to instruct and document the learning of young children. Although these preservice teachers seemed to struggle with using iPads to instruct children in their field placements

  these teachers did appear to generate improvised responses to documenting student learning. Practice or Policy: Such findings offer teacher educators the chance to consider how to assist teachers in moving beyond the dominant practices found in high-stakes teaching contexts. They also offer teacher educators the chance to aid their teachers in reconfiguring the politics and policy of high-stakes early education contexts.

  Preservice teachers reconfiguring teaching young children in a high-stakes early education context through the use of iPads: A case study.

  The increased use of and demand for technology in early childhood education classrooms and programs creates new challenges for practicing and preservice early educators being asked to employ such technology within their teaching. Early childhood teacher education programs have struggled to meet these demands for teaching their students how to integrate such technology into their instruction with young children. Preservice teachers who do receive such training often fail to develop the skills and/or beliefs required to implement technology effectively into their own classrooms. The study reported on in this article addresses this issue by providing insight into how a sample of early childhood preservice teachers who used iPads and their apps in their coursework and high-stakes early learning field placements made sense of using these devices as teachers. Such findings illuminate instructional opportunities for teacher educators to consider as they seek to assist their students in making sense about how to implement as well as adopt appropriate and effective instructional strategies into their own classrooms.

  A case study of how a sample of preservice teachers made sense of incorporating iPads into their instruction with children.

  The global shift toward neoliberalism continues to impact early childhood in numerous ways. One example of this shift is the push by education stakeholders for the incorporation of technology into the teaching of young children. Advocates contend implementing such technology in the classroom will increase children’s academic performance and provide them with the skills needed to attain well-paying jobs in the future. Such rhetoric creates a new set of challenges for early educators who seek to resist this neoliberal shift toward individualism and the framing of education as a process of learning

  earning

  and consuming. The case study examined in this article begins to address this issue by investigating how utilizing iPads in the process of becoming a teacher affected a sample of preservice teachers’ articulations of their roles as educators. Investigating and analyzing their experiences provides members of the early childhood community with steps they might take to assist early educators in framing their roles as teachers through democratic conceptions of practice that they can then implement within their early education context.

  Neoliberal technological devices and articulations of teaching young children: A case study of preservice teachers using iPads in their teacher education program.

  Da Hei Ku

  David P. Barry

  Kindergarten in the United States has fundamentally changed. It is the new first grade where children are taught increased academic content and experience more standardized testing. There is much debate among education stakeholders about these changes

  but such discussions are often siloed— making it difficult to know whether these changes reflect these stakeholders’ understandings of kindergarten specifically or public education in general. This explorative video-cued multivocal ethnographic study addressed this issue by examining how local

  state

  and national education stakeholders made sense of the changed kindergarten. Such findings provide insight into what it is they viewed driving these academic and instructional changes

  what opportunities for further reform exist

  and whether these stakeholders will work to support and/or alter such changes.

  Examining how stakeholders at the local

  state

  and national level made sense of the changed kindergarten

  Joanna Englehardt

  Education stakeholders across the globe continue to call for teachers to learn how to incorporate technology into their teaching. Yet

  incorporating new technology into teacher training programs is quite difficult and does not necessarily lead to teachers developing the skills and beliefs required to implement such technology into their classrooms. Thus

  there is a need for teacher educators to better understand how their students conceptualize and implement such technology into their teaching. The study examined in this article addresses this issue by examining how a sample of preservice teachers conceptualized incorporating iPads into their current and future teaching of children.

  Examining preservice teachers’ conceptual and practical understandings of adopting iPads into their teaching of young children.

  Policymakers’ demands for standardization and improved student achievement increasingly define what early childhood educators working in publicly funded programs teach. Doing so has made it difficult for educators to engage in practices with children that incorporate their sociocultural worlds into their instruction. To begin to address this challenge

  this article examines the experiences of one pre-kindergarten teacher who participated in a professional development course that asked her and her colleagues to implement culturally relevant lessons with their students in their high-stakes urban teaching context. She took up this challenge by examining the issue of parental incarceration with her culturally and linguistically talented students. Analyzing her and her students’ experiences in this investigation provides insight into how early educators can begin to address their students’ sociocultural worlds through culturally relevant pedagogical practices within their standardized teaching contexts.

  “I wanted to know how they perceived jail”: Studying how one early educator brought her students’ worlds into her standardized teaching context.

  The continued standardisation of publicly funded early education programmes has led to teacher educators and researchers focusing in on what works in preparing teachers and their students to succeed in these environments. Such a focus prioritises an epistemological understanding of teaching and learning and leads to investigations examining whether professional development programmes impact participants’ ways of knowing. Many within teacher education question this outcomes-based focus on teaching and learning and are seeking alternative forms of professional development. The programme examined in this article took up this call by implementing an ontological conception of professional development that re-centers the learning process through the experiences of teachers in their classrooms. Specifically

  it assisted a collection of early educators in enacting new ways of professional being that attended to children’s worlds. Studying their experiences provides insight into the opportunities and challenges that exist for those who seek to transform the teacher education process.

  Bringing being into professional development: a qualitative investigation into teachers’ struggles moving beyond an epistemological framing of teaching and learning.

  The global shift toward neoliberalism

  which frames the education of young children through markets

  credentials

  and individualism

  creates a range of challenges for those who call for and seek out democratic teaching practices that strive to address the sociocultural worlds of the children in their programs. This article begins to address this issue. It does so by examining the findings from a qualitative case study that investigated how the practical conceptions of sample of early childhood graduate students in the United States were affected by developing and implementing a learning activity with children that reflected issues central to their lives in and/or outside their classrooms. Investigating and analyzing their experiences provide members of the early childhood community with steps they might take to assist early educators in framing their roles as teachers through democratic conceptions of practice that they can then implement within their early education context.

  Attempting to fracture the neoliberal hold on early educators’ practical conceptions of teaching: A case study.

  Jeong

  H. I.

  Lan

  Y. C.

  Beginning to untangle the strange coupling of power within a neoliberal early education context.

  Mowry

  B.

  Close early learning gaps with RIGOROUS DAP.

  Joanna Englehardt

  Policy makers and early childhood stakeholders across the United States continue to seek policy solutions that improve early educators’ instruction of young children. A primary vehicle for attaining this goal is professional development. This has led to an influx of empirical studies that seek to develop a set of best practices for professional development. While this deductive work is important and informative

  it provides limited insight into how professional development is being conceptualized

  and how teachers experience

  respond to

  or learn from these programs. This article begins to address these issues by presenting findings from a qualitative metasynthesis of published peer-reviewed qualitative studies of professional development programs for in-service early educators in the United States. By analyzing

  synthesizing

  and interpreting these studies

  it appears that while such programs may have a positive impact on teachers’ conceptions of practice

  there is a need to expand the research literature beyond identifying what works so that it includes studies examining teachers using such practices with children and investigations into teachers’ knowledge of their local teaching and learning communities. This study ends by offering an interpretation of the relationship between these findings and the field of teacher education.

  Conceptions of and early childhood educators’ experiences in early childhood professional development programs: A qualitative metasynthesis.

  Christopher

  Brown

  Crozet Elementary School

  Albemarle County School District

  University of Wisconsin-Madison

  New Mexico State University

  Chase Elementary School

  Baltimore County School District

  New Mexico StateUniversity

  New Mexico State University

  The University of Texas at Austin

  New Mexico State University

  Teaching Assistant

  Research and Teaching Assistant. Classes taught: Teaching Reading: Early through Middle Childhood (Fall 2000

  Fall 2002

  Spring 2003); Concerns and Constraints in Teaching Young Children (Fall 2002

  Spring 2003).

  University of Wisconsin-Madison

  Teacher

  1st grade

  Chase Elementary School

  Baltimore County School District

  Teaching Assistant

  New Mexico StateUniversity

  Early Childhood Education Program Area Graduate Advisor

  The University of Texas at Austin

  Project Research Assistant

  New Mexico State University

  Project Research Assistant

  New Mexico State University

  Teaching Assistant

  New Mexico State University

  Assistant Professor

  The University of Texas at Austin

  Professor

  The University of Texas at Austin

  Teacher

  Kindergarten

  Crozet Elementary School

  Albemarle County School District

  Associate Professor

  The University of Texas at Austin

  Early Childhood Education Program Area Coordinator

  The University of Texas at Austin