Spring 2022 Newsletter

Webster University's EdD Newsletter Spring 2022

Dear Readers,

The Ed.D. newsletter is designed for current and prospective students, as well as our alumni. It will keep you up-to-date on Webster University's Doctor of Education program. This includes news from our doctoral students, conference information, professional development opportunities, updates to the program, and more. It is scheduled to be published twice a year, and it is available online.

Enjoy reading!

Dr. Lee-Johnson, Ph.D.

Director of Ed.D.

In This Issue

Program Updates
Recent Works
Student Interviews
Student Updates
Upcoming Conferences
Contact Us

Program Updates

The Ed.D. has undergone some exciting new changes. The program now has four emphases due to the recent restructuring of the special education program. The emphases are:

Educational Leadership
Special Education (four emphases combined into one)
Teaching English as a Second Language
Transformative Learning in the Global Community

These emphases will begin for the Fall 2022 cohort. New cohorts will begin every even year.

Additionally, the current on-ground Transformative Learning in the Global Community emphasis will be converted to 100% via Zoom starting in Fall 2022. This new synchronous modality is called Live Virtual, and we have received approval already for its use. We will also be offering a fully asynchronous online cohort for the Transformative emphasis alongside Live Virtual. Beginning in all emphases' second year, the coursework will be presented via Live Virtual.

Lastly, we are excited at the potential to develop an Ed.D. at Webster's global campus in Tashkent, Uzbekistan. The Ed.D. Director, Dr. Lee-Johnson, had a meeting with the Leadership Council and colleagues in Tashkent for developing an Ed.D., which will be a breath of fresh air, as most of the existing programs follow the European model. A proposal has been submitted and is pending final approval for Fall 2023 admission.

Recent Works

Media Coverage:

Invited Talk: Dr. Lee-Johnson was invited to talk about Critical Race Theory on the April 29th Webster Speaks episode. Webster Speaks is a virtual speaker series that features discussions with leaders within Webster University and the community in regards to confronting systemic racism issues. The event was livestreamed and uploaded to the Webster Speaks playlist on YouTube. For more information regarding Webster Speaks, please visit this link.

Publications:

Ed.D. Collaborative Article: Through a collaborative effort, Dr. Lee-Johnson and 11 doctoral students from the Transformative Learning in the Global Community emphasis' article, Adapting an Ethnographic Research to an Online Survey Amid COVID-19: Transformative Lens in Educational Research, has been published!

Lee-Johnson, Y.L., Flewellan, V., Fair, K., O’Connor, K., Dixon, T., Ono, J., Spencer, A., Singler, J., Schmuke, M., Hanses, J., Barton, A., & Rodney, T. (2022). Adapting an ethnographic research to an online survey amid COVID-19: Transformative lens in educational research. In Sage Research Methods Cases. https://dx.doi.org/10.4135/9781529799736

Invited Book Chapter: Jennifer Ono, a current doctoral student, was invited to write a book chapter in the first book, Growth, of a 4 book series by Jennifer Bardot and Carrie Burggraf. This book series will act as a second edition to Bardot and Burggraf's first book, Owning Your G.R.I.T.: 40 Women's Stories of Harnessing the Power of Growth, Resilience, Intention, and Tenacity. More information regarding Jennifer's chapter to come.

Reggio-Emilia Article: Dr. Lee-Johnson wrote an article, The Transformative Power of Co-researching, for Innovations in Early Education: The International Reggio Emilia Exchange connecting her background in Mezirow's transformative learning to the Reggio Emilia Approach. In this short article, she discusses how encouraging children to take ownership of their learning as co-researchers through the Reggio Emilia Approach is transformative, rewarding them and their teachers with shared opportunities to cultivate a greater understanding of the world.

Lee-Johnson, Y. L. (2022). The transformative power of co-researching. Innovations in Early Education: The International Reggio Emilia Exchange, Spring Issue, p. 13.

Presentations:

National Association for Multicultural Education (NAME) Conference: Dr. Lee-Johnson presented virtually at the National Association for Multicultural Education Conference held March 10-12. Her presentation, Disrupting Anti-Asian Hate Crimes in the Troubled World with Critical Discourse Analysis, focused on tackling anti-Asian hate crimes by employing Counter-storytelling and Microethnographic Discourse Analysis as analytical frameworks. Through these frameworks, Dr. Lee-Johnson identified themes to disrupt anti-Asian hate.

School of Education Special Event: The Director of the Ed.D. program invited a doctoral student, Jennifer Ono, to talk about radical transformations needed for today's schools at our School of Education Special Event: Teaching at a Crossroads on March 29th. Jennifer discussed her 32 years of experience as a classroom teacher in various states, including Hawai'i, and her focus on radical transformations for validating the home languages spoken by multilingual learners, as well as the importance of preventing language loss.

Student Interviews

For this newsletter, we had the opportunity to interview various doctoral students about their research, dissertation topics, and their ideas on being transformative in education. We interviewed Katherine O'Connor and Jennifer Ono, current doctoral students in the Transformative Learning in the Global Community emphasis. Please take a moment to read their interviews below.

Katherine O'Connor

Can you tell us more about your professional work and passion for education?

Katherine is a two-time (soon to be three-time) Webster alum with a BA in psychology (1994) and an MA in media literacy (2008). However, Webster has always been a part of her life. “My grandma is a 1944 Webster alum. She just turned 100 years old, and we think she may be the oldest surviving alumni at the moment,” Katherine stated. Even her aunt was a 1968 Webster alumni. So, when it came to education, it was easy to decide that she would continue the legacy.

“I have a love/hate relationship with education,” Katherine continued, elaborating more on her educational journey. She has always loved learning; however, education was not always a place she found comfort in. Growing up in St. Louis in the 70’s and 80’s as an adopted biracial child, Katherine stated that she struggled to see herself in education. “No one looked like me all through elementary and secondary school. It even continued into college.” As an undergraduate at Webster, Katherine initially pursued a degree in music, but she still faced not finding her place. Again, there was no one who she could identify with. Ultimately, this led to her pursuing psychology instead. With this background, Katherine worked as an educational coordinator for a private not-for profit that worked with pregnant and post-natal teens and as a crisis counselor at a private school serving teens with severe to profound behavior, educational, and/or learning disorders.

Eventually she found her way back to Webster, now as a graduate student, to pursue media literacy. “Media literacy is the study of media content,” Katherine explained. "You look at who the media is for, what the message of it is, how it is developed, who made it, and what the production values are.” Through this program, she began developing a more critical mindset of media. “I love media, don’t get me wrong, but I’m also very hypercritical of it.” After graduating with her MA, Katherine was pushed out of her comfort zone and asked to teach an Intro to Genre Studies class in the School of Communications as an adjunct in 2010. This would eventually lead her to transitioning into academic advising, first at Webster and then at Southern Illinois University – Edwardsville. “But my goal was always to come back to Webster, which I did in 2015,” Katherine added. This return to Webster led her to her current position as the Manager of Student Engagement for the Online Learning Center.

When asked why she decided to pursue the Ed.D. in Transformative Learning in the Global Community, Katherine explained that she knew she wanted to obtain a terminal degree to write and research topics that interested her. She wanted to know what are the rights and wrongs in education?, what comes next?, and what can I do to help? It was through the suggestion of friend, colleague, and now classmate, Jessica Hanses, that Katherine decided to pursue the Ed.D.

Katherine concluded with “Education is a path that allows people to explore. To explore themselves, to explore ideas and concepts, to build, and create. It allows them to learn about the world around them, both near and far. Students can learn about something small through microbiology or something vastly large through astronomy. They can delve through history or great works of art. They can perform and create and entertain. They can find a passion and see where it takes them.”

What is your definition of a transformative educator?

“Transformative educators are curious,” Katherine responded, “they ask the following questions:

What’s next?

Is there something missing?
How has our ever-evolving world changed the way we educate?
How can I make an impact?
What works in education? What doesn’t?
Is there a point of view that is being silenced?”

She continued by emphasizing that it is the responsibility of educators to constantly be asking these questions, to challenge the status quo, giving a voice to those that have been historically silenced.

Katherine also took a moment to discuss her classmates and the dynamic they all possess. Students in the current cohort come from diverse backgrounds, but ultimately have one goal in common: to transform education. “We have created a safe space for ourselves where we can discuss our passions and help one another to reach this common goal.”

Would you share with us your tentative dissertation topic?

After pondering over what direction her dissertation would take, Katherine finally settled on focusing on a more personal approach. “The title is Shades of beige: An autoethnography on my biracial ontological sense of self,” Katherine elaborated. As mentioned previously, she grew up during a time where she struggled to see herself in the world around her, constantly feeling like she was on the outside looking in. “I kept being told I was 'too White to be Black' or 'too Black to be White,' like my identity was on some sort of spectrum where I was being literally pushed to either side by the opposing one.” Katherine linked this experience to the word ontology, which can be roughly defined as understanding one’s worldview and how they interpret where they fit in this world.

For as long as she can remember, Katherine struggled with having to identify as “other,” checking off the “other” box when having to self-identify herself. Nonetheless, she kept searching for how she fit within the world physically around her and through the world of media. These feelings led her to the construction of her dissertation with the help of Dr. Lee-Johnson and Dr. Tamashiro. Through the lens of ontology, Critical Race Theory (CRT), and Identity Theory, Katherine plans to tell vignettes about racial events that occurred as she was growing up and mirror them with media events, such as those in newspapers, magazines, television, and videos, that correlate with these stories. By pairing these concepts, Katherine hopes to offer current insight on how her frameworks match with these racial events. She is particularly excited to explore how CRT has changed from its first introduction in law studies in the late 20th century to its implications in education today and how Identity Theory applies to those who are biracial. “I’m excited at the opportunity to transform what has been deemed logical for so long but has become illogical because of our global world.”

**To learn more about Katherine and her research, please visit here.

Jennifer Ono

Can you tell us more about your professional work and passion for education?

Jennifer received her BA in 1990 in education, and aside from an 8-year stint educating teachers at an educational nonprofit, she has spent her whole career as a classroom teacher. “My initial plan was to get teaching certification in all 50 states,” Jennifer stated, but this plan ended when certification procedures became more complicated across each state. Despite this, she has still worked in a variety of places, including Florida, Chicago, Hawai’i, where she worked for 12 years, and now in Missouri.

“Up until my current job as a 4th grade teacher, I had only ever taught students who were of low socioeconomic status,” Jennifer explained. After some life changes, Jennifer and her children ended up in Kirkwood to live with her parents. Through conversations with her mother, she debated on how best to approach and teach students from an upper middle-class district. “My mom replied with, ‘How about teaching them to be more inclusive and accepting of the students you taught before?’” Jennifer continued. This conversation became the driving force behind her current teaching style. “I started having uncomfortable conversations and pushing boundaries to help everyone be more inclusive and understanding.”

Jennifer realized that based on her positionality, her voice had power and that that power could ignite her passion to change education, a system that she stated has been the same since she got her BA. “The teacher education system hasn’t changed and needs to be upgraded. It’s been going on like this for too long.” This was why when she discovered the Transformative Learning in the Global Community emphasis Ed.D. at Webster, Jennifer felt it had been tailored just for her, to give her a way to push her passion even further.

What is your definition of a transformative educator?

“A transformative educator can be anyone who’s looking to disrupt the status quo,” Jennifer began. “It can be anybody who wants to make radical changes.” She continued by explaining again that the current education model is archaic, not fitting in with the current society that we live in. However, Jennifer also mentioned that we must work within the bounds that we operate in. “What people don’t understand is that transformations can be small. Anyone can be transformed.” One small way Jennifer does this is by wearing shirts that make her 10-year-old students think critically about current society.

“Another example happened just in class today!” she exclaimed. During their history lesson, Jennifer’s students were learning about organizing a new government. The students were split into different sets of colonies and were tasked to discuss how best to develop their areas. The kicker was the students also needed to communicate across groups but could only do so by mail. The mail service was run by Jennifer, acting as a postmaster that delivered letters to each set of colonies. “I actually had one student write me a letter telling me I was fired. He soon realized how much of a disaster that was because all communication stopped!” Jennifer stated. The student soon reinstated her with a follow-up letter. “This allowed my students to be critical thinkers, and slowly, their minds were being transformed as they worked together to make a better unified government that benefited all.” Jennifer’s students were able to take their pre-conceived thoughts about society and see firsthand the effect they may have on a government. “Years from now I hope my students will remember this lesson. That’s transformative.”

Can you tell us more about the radical transformations in education you have experienced as a long-term classroom teacher?

On March 29th, Jennifer was invited by Ed.D. Director Dr. Lee-Johnson to present on her 32-year career as a classroom teacher and the radical transformations in education she experienced at the School of Education Special Event: Teaching at a Crossroads. “My largest passion has been in preserving languages, promoting languaging in the classroom,” Jennifer responded. “We are systematically doing a disservice to these students by excluding their home languages.” This passion was especially near to Jennifer when she worked in Hawai’i, where many of her students and even her children spoke pidgin at home but were forced to use the school language, English, exclusively. While she worked to offer explanations of standards and required tests to students in pidgin, her colleagues were negating this language use, pushing a whitewashed curriculum.

“I am a firm believer in teaching everyone’s story,” Jennifer continued. “I don’t have to know every language as a transformative educator.” If students are displaying deep levels of language understanding but are unsure of a word in English or mix up word order, Jennifer believes they are still learning, that these errors are correct. “We should be encouraging these methods of language preservation. Many teachers who are not prepared or do not understand who they are or what they bring into the classroom can harm children.”

Would you share with us your tentative dissertation topic?

“The radical transformations I experienced actually tie directly to my dissertation topic,” Jennifer explained. At first, she thought her dissertation would be about preserving home languages of children to educate others on the importance of their inclusion in classrooms. However, after working through her research interests, Jennifer switched to focusing on how teachers help multilingual students access White mainstream English. “Initially I was going to conduct interviews with 6 monolingual teachers and 6 bilingual teachers. I soon realized though that it would turn into a White vs. POC teacher dynamic, and I didn’t feel right telling POC stories as a White woman. I wanted to do justice by them and thought more about what story I could tell.” Jennifer even considered focusing on power languages such as Spanish, Arabic, and Mandarin, but again it did not fit the narrative she wanted to write.

Eventually, she settled on a mixed methods approach with the help of Dr. Lee-Johnson. She would do a survey of US teachers that focused on their methodology for helping these students access White mainstream English. Jennifer would also conduct interviews through purposeful sampling with teachers. The example she gave was potentially interviewing 2 teachers from Hawai’i, 2 POC teachers from her district, and 2 White teachers. Through this research, Jennifer hopes to uncover that people are assisting multilingual students and making radical transformations in the classroom. Furthermore, she wants to discuss implications for changing how college education courses are developed to better prepare incoming teachers and even veteran ones to aid these students. “I’ll even help to develop them!” she exclaimed.

**To learn more about Jennifer and her research, please visit here.

Student Updates

In this section, we will take a moment to highlight some of the personal updates and achievements of our current and past doctoral students. Please take a moment to read about their hard work and dedication.

Dr. Veronica Clay

We are proud to announce that Ed.D. alumna Dr. Veronica Clay has been selected as our School of Education Spring 2022 Commencement Graduate Student Speaker. Dr. Clay graduated from the Transformative Learning in the Global Community emphasis in 2020 and continues to use what she learned through the program to better serve students as an urban school counselor.

upcoming conferences

Here are a few conferences that may be of interest to current or prospective students, or alumni. These conferences provide professional development and networking opportunities. Conferences are also a great opportunity for students to present their research. Please note that some of these conferences are offering in-person and virtual events. Updated information will be provided as it is made available.

ASCD (Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development) Recharge & Reconnect

March 18-21, 2022 (in-person)

April 20-22, 2022 (virtual)

Chicago, IL

https://events.ascd.org/annual-conference

AAAL (American Association for Applied Linguistics) Virtual Conference

March 19 - 22, 2022

Pittsburgh, PA

https://www.aaal.org/events/2022-aaal-conference#%23

TESOL International Association International Convention & English Language Expo

March 22 - 25, 2022 (hybrid)

Pittsburgh, PA