Two scholars with ties to the UW–Madison School of Education have been selected as 2022 National Academy of Education (NAEd)/Spencer Dissertation Fellows.
UW–Madison graduate student Tyler Hook is pursuing a joint doctoral degree in educational policy studies and cultural anthropology. His research examines the intersections of race/racism, capitalism, and educational development.
Hook’s dissertation, entitled “Corporatized Education: Reshaping Schooling and Educational Governance in Liberia,” examines corporatized educational reform and schooling through the Liberian Educational Advancement Program (LEAP). Hook describes LEAP as a partnership between the Ministry of Education, social impact investors, and largely for-profit corporate school chains that attempts to align social and educational policy and development in Liberia with the “invisible heart of the market” through increased surveillance, financialization, and corporate management.
Hook says that his dissertation will explore “how these processes of corporatization, typically following moments of ‘crisis’ have transformed educational landscapes, creating new forms of governance and development that potentially reproduce racialized systems of inequality.”
Hook is the sixth student studying with the School of Education’s Department of Educational Policy Studies since 2020 to be named an NAEd/Spencer Dissertation Fellow. In 2021 Elizabeth Hauck and Rachel Johnson received these awards, and in 2020 Qing Liu, Huimin Wang, and Choua Xiong were selected.
UW–Madison alumna Jessica Lee Stovall is currently a doctoral candidate in the Race, Inequality, and Language Education (RILE) and Curriculum and Teacher Education (CTE) programs at Stanford University’s Graduate School of Education. She holds a bachelor’s degree in secondary education from UW–Madison as well as a master’s degree in literature from Northwestern University.
Stovall’s dissertation is entitled, “ ‘It’s Just Our Brilliance, Uncut and Raw’: The Transformative Power of a Black Teacher Fugitive Space.” An abstract notes that “growing concerns about antiblackness in education and the related attrition of Black teachers highlight the need for research on professional development spaces that support Black teacher retention.”
Stovall describes her research as “a longitudinal examination of how Black teachers co-create a Black teacher fugitive space, and how this space informs and supports their pedagogies and navigation of antiblackness at their school sites.”
The 35 NAEd/Spencer Dissertation Fellows — selected from a pool of 353 applicants — will receive $27,500 for a period of up to two years to complete their dissertations and also attend professional development retreats.
Learn more about Hook and Stovall’s research — and that of all of those selected as 2022 NAEd/Spencer Dissertation Fellows — on this NAEd webpage.