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I began my teaching career as a specialist in early education in a university lab school setting, with both bachelor degrees and a master's degree in child development and family studies in around 1989.  Having taught in community colleges, early childhood lab schools, nature settings (including national and state parks) and public school settings for the first 10 years of my career, I pursued doctoral studies at the University of Wisconsin, Madison and earned a PHD in Curriculum and Instruction in 2003.

My research and teaching interests are focused on issues of power and identity in home, school, and community partnerships, early years teacher development, early childhood policies and practices, and critical, qualitative and mixed-methods research methodologies. I have researched in and written scholarly work about social action, agency, culture and cultural and identity change in demographically rich communities of all types as well as the impact of pre service teacher's work on ECED classrooms. I have researched in a variety of diverse communities throughout my career. In 2024 and 2025, the office of Research and Economic Development awarded my work for a Research and Creativity Award, and a SEED grant from the College of Education, Health, and Human Services was also awarded at mid-career, for a cross-national mixed-method study about the Advocacy Perspectives of Parents and Teachers of Gender-Diverse Children.  

In 2003, my dissertation work was awarded an Out-Standing Dissertation Award by the Early Education and Child Development Special Interest Groups of the American Educational Research Association.  In 2010, Investigating change in field sites through Mentor and Candidate Dialogues was chosen as the outstanding article of the year in the Journal of Early Childhood Teacher Education.  Other authored and co-authored work(s) have or will appear in such journals as, Journal of Educational Policy, Teaching and Teacher Education, The Journal of Early Childhood Teacher Education, the Journal of Educational Change and The Urban Review, and the Center for Innovation and Equity in Childhood and I've contributed to or co-authored works in English Education, The American Educational Review Journal, and Early Childhood Research and Practice, and Contemporary Issues in Early Childhood. Additional scholarly publications have been accepted in Anthropology and Education, The Bloomsbury Handbook on Gender and Sexuality, The International Critical Policy Studies Journal, the Journal of Global Studies of Childhood, and the Journal of Family Diversity Education, Young Children, the Journal of Academic Freedom, and Theory into Practice.  In 2019 an edited book entitled, Nurturing Nature and The Environment with Young Children ~ Elders ~ Earth.  Series, Childhood. Editor, Faye Leerink. Routledge, Taylor Francis.  was published with local Ohio teachers in relation to globally accomplished leaders in outdoor education.