Reich College of Education

Contact

Position and Rank: Assistant Professor

Program Affiliation: Leadership & Educational Studies

http://chrisosmond.com/

Degrees:

• 2006, Ph.D., Culture, Curriculum, and Change, School of Education, The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
• 2000, M.A., Curriculum Studies and Teacher Education, School of Education, Stanford University
• 1993, B.A., English and Spanish, Wesleyan University

I teach social foundations of education. I am interested in a lot of things, but I care most deeply about the professional preparation of teachers.

My research interests:

1. Curriculum theory and aesthetics
• How what can be counted is not always most worth counting
• How the arts reveal and articulate aspects of curriculum
• Qualitative inquiry, narrative, and autobiographical methods
2. The use of literature in schools
• Reading as a place in the curriculum where aesthetic experience thrives
• Reading as a place where private and public come together
• Reading together as a professional formation site
3. Educational policy and professional role of teachers

• Is teaching a profession, an avocation, a calling, a guild, a craft, or something else?
• Who decides what good teachers are, and how they are to be trained, certified, rewarded, and sanctioned?
• If "audit culture" is the new common sense, what happens to what can't be audited?

I am currently facilitating a Humanities and Health Research Cluster with faculty from the Department of English, the College of Education, and the College of Health Sciences. We are exploring the role of literature groups in the professional education of health care providers and teachers. We are interested in understanding the values and challenges held in common by the "caring professions" of nursing, social work, and teaching and the common social issues of professional formation in those fields (e.g., gender and power, autonomy, perception of self-efficacy).

I'll be the department's Faculty Senate Representative beginning fall 2011. Also a husband, father, drummer, and runner - though the knee is bugging me these days.