I am Associate Professor of Leadership & Educational Studies and Associate Director of the Doctoral Program in Educational Leadership at the Reich College of Education, Appalachian State University, Boone, North Carolina. Here’s my vita.
I am trained in curriculum theory, and favor arts-based, autobiographical, resolutely qualitative approaches to issues. I teach epistemology, methods, and curriculum theory to doctoral students, social foundations of education to undergraduates, and narrative and sustainable caring practice in the Honors College.
I care most deeply about the preparation of caring professionals for long, thriving careers, especially teachers and educational leaders.
I am deeply concerned about what is happening to the practice of teaching and educational leadership in a policy environment that believes you can only improve what you can measure. This way of knowing the world has its own logic, which usurps all other ways of understanding what matters.
I am not sure education is a “profession,” and while we certainly gain something by calling it that, I wonder what we lose. I like “vocation” better.
I think burnout prevention is an urgent issue in all caring professions, especially education. I think “burnout” is the wrong word to describe the issue, actually, because it suggests that there’s something more wrong with the educator than the system she is working in. “Demoralization” is more accurate. I think that medical education is doing better work on the issue than we are, and I try to bring insights from their world into ours.
love it!