UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — Brittany Aronson joins the Penn State College of Education as an associate professor of education (teacher education) from Miami University in Ohio where she served as an assistant professor in educational leadership.
What she sees in the college is a like-minded institution looking to change education from the ground up.
“Working at Penn State brings exciting new opportunities,” Aronson said. “The College of Education’s strategic plan is exciting to me as someone who is passionate about collaboration and building community with critical scholars. I hope to continue having an impact in shaping the field of teacher education and finding ways to integrate social justice within and across the curriculum.”
Her research work has been rooted in discovering where inequality exists within the education system and how to best create lasting and meaningful change. She explained her research agenda has two related strands: preparing educators and community members to actively work against oppressive school structures and the role educational policy plays in teaching and teacher education.
“As an interdisciplinary cultural studies/social foundations scholar, my research overlaps across the fields of social justice teacher education, critical race studies and whiteness studies in education, and critical educational policy,” Aronson said.
“The impetus of my work stems from my background as an elementary school teacher working in diverse school settings,” Aronson continued. “My own teacher preparation led me to ask questions regarding how we prepare teachers to be anti-racist — and anti-oppressive in general — and fuels the research questions that I engage with today.”
Aronson’s work has been published in the Review of Educational Research, Journal of Critical Policy Studies, Teachers College Record and Multicultural Perspectives.
She received her doctorate in cultural studies from the University of Tennessee in 2014 and holds two certificates in qualitative research methods in education and educational policy.
Her hope is that her students realize that being willing to listen to others and go to uncomfortable places is how change for the better is achieved.
“I bring my own positionality as a multiracial Latina scholar to the classroom to demonstrate vulnerability that is often required in doing justice-oriented work,” Aronson said. “We don’t all share the same lived experiences that have shaped us, but we can share our learned experiences that are ever-evolving.
“I am here for my students and will always bring care and compassion in their learning journey,” she continued. “But that doesn’t mean it will be easy or that they won’t be uncomfortable at times. That’s OK. This is just part of learning. But I’m here as an educator because I believe in the power of education. So, I will be on this journey with my students.”