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Katie Kirchgasler is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Curriculum and Instruction at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Her research focuses on the impacts of education reforms that inadvertently perpetuate legacies of segregated colonial schooling. She investigates practices within educational research and pedagogy that create hierarchies of knowledge and feeling among students, families, and communities. Utilizing historicizing ethnographic approaches, Katie explores how inherited practices shape students' experiences and contribute to forms of exclusion that demand assimilation. Her scholarship has been recognized by the National Academy of Education and the Spencer Foundation, and she has published in notable journals such as Teachers College Record and Science Education. Katie teaches both graduate and undergraduate seminars where she explores themes related to post/de/anticolonial studies and raciolinguistic perspectives. Beyond academia, she works with pre-service teachers, encouraging them to challenge standardized norms and dismantle raciolinguistic hierarchies while integrating principles of culturally relevant and justice-centered pedagogies. Her intersections with interdisciplinary graduate students often lead to discussions on power, racialization, and coloniality within science education and beyond.
University of Wisconsin-Madison • Madison, WI
Teaching and conducting research in Science Education with a focus on equity and inclusion.
Department: Department of Computer Sciences