Bill Ayers's interests include teaching for social justice, urban educational reform, narrative and interpretive research, children in trouble with the law, and related issues. See www.billayers.org.

Dr. Capehart teaches the first and second field-based courses in the teacher preparation sequence. Through the use of textual materials, class assignments and experiences in local schools, juniors are exposed to real world of urban education.

While much of his time has been devoted to teaching these courses, his primary area of interest lies eleswhere. He is an historian by training and is also interested in teaching courses such as Social Studies and the Arts or Literature, Social Studies and the Arts.

Dr. Capehart is especially interested in issues revolving around migration and immigration. He finds the movement of people across both national and international borders fascinating. His dissertation examined the migration of Africans to Chicago since 1960. Because of the ongoing demographic shifts, he continues to explore this topic.

My research and teaching interests include mathematics education, teaching for social justice and critical literacies in an urban, multicultural context, Freirean approaches to teaching/learning, and Chicago school policy.

In my work, I argue that K-12 students need to be prepared through their mathematics education to investigate and critique injustice (such as racism and language discrimination), and to challenge, in words and actions, oppressive structures and acts. I prepare teachers who can teach mathematics and other subjects in this manner to students in urban settings.

I have taught mathematics for social justice in my own classroom in a Chicago public middle school and currently work with the Greater Lawndale/Little Village High School for Social Justice (also a public school). There I co-teach with and support the math teachers, help teachers and students develop/teach/learn from social justice mathematics projects, and work with a group of students who are co-researchers, public advocates, and spokespeople for teaching and learning mathematics for social justice. Together, we (teachers, students, myself) study the process of creating a critical mathematics program for the school, focused on developing students' sociopolitical consciousness, sense of social agency, and their strong cultural/social identities.

Dr. Khisty integrates two research areas: Bilingual/ESL Education and Mathematics Education. She teaches courses in both areas. Her research is dedicated to improving the mathematics education of Latinas/os in urban contexts. She is specifically interested in contextual factors -- such as teachers' discourse in mathematics with Latinas/os, issues of multilgualism in mathematics instruction and curriculum, and the politics of classroom processes -- that affect Latinas/os' education. She also is Director and Lead PI for the UIC site of the Center for the Mathematics Education of Latino/as (CEMELA).

Dr. Marvin Lynn conducts qualitative research on the work, lives and experiences of African American male urban schoolteachers and the role of urban teacher education programs in developing teachers for racial justice. In addition, he charts and studies the development of the Critical Race Studies in Education movement in the United States and in Europe. He has a forthcoming book entitled What’s Race got to do with it? Critical Race Theory and the New Sociology of Education which is due out in 2008. He co-founded and organized the first ever Critical Race Theory and Education Conference in the United States. The year prior, he was a keynote speaker at the first ever Critical Race Theory seminar in the United Kingdom. He has published articles in several well-respected academic journals, including Teachers College Record, Qualitative Studies in Education and Review of Research in Education.  He also serves on the editorial boards of several education journals. Prof. Lynn was previously Associate Professor and Founder/Director of the Minority & Urban Education Program at the University of Maryland, College Park. He also taught in public and private elementary schools in New York City (Harlem) and Chicago. Dr. Lynn teaches courses on urban education, multicultural education, African American education, critical race theory and education, and methods of elementary teaching in urban schools.

Dr. Majors is a former National Academy of Education/Spencer Foundation Postdoctoral Fellow. Her research focuses on adolescent and adult literacy, curriculum design and instruction, and multicultural education. She publishes in various journals.

Taking a somewhat non-traditional route to academia, I arrived at UIC in Fall 2004 after teaching mathematics courses ranging from algebra to differential equations for 15 years in a California community college.  At UIC, I hold a joint appointment in education and mathematics and I teach mathematics courses for preservice teachers, elementary math methods, and graduate courses in mathematics education. Then, and now, my research has focused on mathematics education for African American learners and undertaking critical analyses of mathematics education policy to insure that mathematics education is responsive to the needs of these learners. My empirical studies have focused on understanding the salience of race and identity in African American struggle for mathematics literacy. My research takes into account sociohistorical, community, and school forces and draws from culture-practice theory, cultural-ecological theory, critical theories of race, and racial identity development theory. I am currently developing a perspective that frames mathematics learning and participation as racialized forms of experience. This perspective is applicable to all students. You can read about my early work in Mathematics Success and Failure Among African American Youth and my evolving perspective in Mathematics Teaching, Learning, and Liberation in the Lives of Black Children.

My teaching and research interests are largely focused on teacher education and the construction of teacher practice. I am particularly interested in beginning science teachers as they learn to teach in the context of their own classrooms. It is during this induction phase of professional development when new teachers work at connecting knowledge from their formal preparation with knowledge from their teaching experiences.

Beginning teachers learn a great deal in their own classrooms interacting with a diverse student body and wide array of learners. In schools, teachers work at crafting a teaching practice in relation to their students, the school culture and the local community. It is through professional knowledge gleaned from practice that teachers learn to enact "a philosophy of hope and opportunity" that nurtures all students as capable and successful learners.

At present, the profession largely ignores the importance of practice knowledge in crafting teacher identity, and fueling career-long professional learning. My interests focus on exploring practice-based learning opportunities within teacher education, and how this conception of professional knowledge differs from -- and complements -- professional knowledge learned in formal teacher preparation, including university coursework and application-oriented field experiences.

Dr. Razfar's research interests are grounded in sociocultural theories of language, learning, and human development. In particular, he draws on linguistic anthropological perspectives such as language socialization and language ideologies for the purposes of understanding learning and development in urban schools. He teaches courses in the Bilingual/ESL program as well as doctoral courses in Language, Literacy, and Culture. Dr. Razfar's work is anchored in communities whose language practices have been historically marginalized in many formal and official spaces of society; thus, there is an explicit social justice character to his research. He currently serves as a principal investigator or co-PI on several nationally funded grants aimed at improving teaching and learning for English Language Learners in urban contexts. 

Dr. Shanahan is the director of the UIC Council on Teacher Education. Her research is in content-area literacy, conceptual change, and the reading of multiple texts.

Timothy Shanahan's research and teaching focus on how to improve schoolwide reading achievement particularly in urban schools, the relationships of reading and writing (that is how learning one helps students to learn the other), family literacy, and reading assessment. He teaches courses in fostering school reading improvement and synthesizing literacy research. He has a blog site: www.shanahanonliteracy.com

Dr. Tatum's research foci are adolescent literacy, teacher professional development, and the literacy development of African American males. 

Focal Research Interests

• emergent literacy
• beginning reading and writing instruction
• children's literature and literacy education
• technology and teacher education for literacy instruction

Teaching and Program Coordination:

MEd Program in Literacy Language, & Culture

• Program Coordinator
• CI 527 - Reading Specialists as Literacy Leaders
• CI 546 - Children's and Adolescent Literature

 PhD Program in Literacy Language, & Culture

• CI 583 - Research in Beginning Reading and Writing
• CI 586 - Research in Children's and Adolescent Literature

 Current Projects:

• “Charting a Course to Literacy” Early Reading First project in Chicago Public Schools Charter Schools (see http://www.uic.edu/educ/erf/)
• "APLLE: Achieving Preschool Language and Literacy Excellence" Early Reading First project in Archdiocese of Chicago schools (see http://www.uic.edu/educ/erf/)
  
• "IMPACT: Instructional Model Program for All Children and Teachers—Early Language and Literacy Excellence" Early Reading First project in Archdiocese of Chicago schools (see http://www.uic.edu/educ/erf/)  

My teaching and research interests include: Classroom-based teaching and learning of science in urban settings; collaborative teacher action research; discourse in science classrooms; integration of science and literacy; science education reform in elementary school and college science classrooms. Focusing on the teaching and learning of science in elementary school and college classrooms, I engage in theoretical and empirical explorations of what it means to teach and understand science using primarily qualitative, interpretive approaches. I study various interplays that are enacted in science classrooms, namely the interplay between developing theories and collecting and analyzing data, between the individual student and the larger classroom community, between the teacher and the learner, between affective, cognitive, and social dimensions of experience, between reading, writing, drawing, talking, and doing science, between an individuals construction of meaning and the existing socio-cultural practice of science, between intellectual-thematic and social-organizational aspects of a classroom community. The collaborative teacher action research that I have been conducting has been supported by grants from the National Science Foundation (NSF), the State of Illinois, professional organizations, and the university, as I work with elementary school and college teachers to reform science education and explore the possibilities and challenges that emerge.

Dr. Watkins teaches seven to ten selected courses within these areas: race issues in public education, curriculum history and theory, history of public education, educational policy studies, social studies education, and multicultural education. Course readings are carefully chosen to interrogate school as a social, political and racial institution.

Connected to his course assignments, Dr. Watkins researches and writes on the political, racial and historical forces shaping schools, especially school knowledge. Critical inquiry, Marxian theory, colonial studies and social justice are but a few notions informing his work. He has written and edited three books, with other publications including journal articles, technical manuals, encyclopedia entries, book reviews, and essays in the popular media.

Dr. Watkins actively shares his scholarship at academic conferences, university colloquia, community organizations, churches, book clubs and fraternal orders. For more information, see William H. Watkins.com