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I began my teaching career as a specialist in early education in a university lab school setting, with both bachelor degrees and a master's degree in child development and family studies in around 1989.  Having taught in community colleges, early childhood lab schools, and public school settings for about 8 years, I pursued doctoral studies at the University of Wisconsin, Madison and earned a PHD in Curriculum and Instruction in 2003.

My research and teaching interests are focused on issues of power and identity in home, school, and community partnerships, early years teacher development, early childhood policies and practices, and qualitative and mixed-methods research methodologies. I have researched in and written scholarly work about social action, agency, culture and cultural and identity change in diverse communities as well as the impact of pre service teacher's work on ECED classrooms. I find the intersections of social justice work, activism, school formation and the formation of schooled subjects (students) fascinating.

In 2010, Investigating change in field sites through Mentor and Candidate Dialogues was chosen as the outstanding article of the year in the Journal of Early Childhood Teacher Education.  Other authored and co-authored work(s) have or will appear in such journals as, Journal of Educational Policy, Teaching and Teacher Education, The Journal of Early Childhood Teacher Education, the Journal of Educational Change and The Urban Review, and the Center for Innovation and Equity in Childhood and I've contributed to or co-authored works in English Education, The American Educational Review Journal, and Early Childhood Research and Practice, and Contemporary Issues in Early Childhood.