Ashlee Anderson, PhD

Clinical Associate Professor, Cultural Studies

Biography

Ashlee Anderson is a clinical associate professor of Cultural Studies in Education (CSE).

She earned a BA in Classics and Anthropology from the University of Tennessee and an MA in Classical Languages from the University of Georgia, after which she served as a High School Latin teacher in South Carolina and an Educational Specialist with UTK’s Pre-College Enrichment Programs. She went on to complete her PhD in Education with a primary specialization in CSE and a secondary specialization in Educational Policy Studies from the University of Tennessee, where she now teaches graduate courses in the CSE doctoral concentration and master’s degree program, as well as CSE undergraduate courses in international education. Her primary research interests include foundations of education/sociology of education, teacher education/teacher development, qualitative research methodologies, education policy and reform, international education, equity and social justice, and cultural studies in education.

Professional Background

Research

As a former high school educator and current faculty member who works with both undergraduate and graduate students, Professor Anderson is primarily interested in the (in)equity effects of education policy as it manifests both locally and globally.  Teacher education and development, especially in urban contexts, has provided a productive outlet for these areas of interest.  Her work has included systematic inquiry related to both program-specific elements of teacher education, as well as the ways in which larger educational discourses inform and structure those elements.  As such, her research trajectory typically employs both macro and micro analyses of the ways in which schools have the potential to provide transformative interventions into the lives of students and communities, although they do not always do so.  These macro and micro analyses have manifested in the following research strands: 1) the ways in which domestic and international educational policy development and implementation structure the experiences of public school teachers; 2) how educators think about and respond to those often oppressive school structures; and 3) how teacher education functions as an intermediary between these two.