Dr. Shanté Stuart McQueen joined Portland State’s Curriculum and Instruction department in the fall of 2020, after completing a 2-year postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Pittsburgh’s Center on Race and Social Problems (CRSP). She received both her Master’s in Education and PhD from UCLA, in their Teacher Education and Urban Schooling programs, respectively. Though her doctoral/research career has taken her in several different directions, her primary motivation has always been to seek out and find ways to scale up school environments that support the academic and emotional health of students of color. Through her doctoral career, Dr. Stuart McQueen focused on community schools as spaces wherein communities of color might have agency and determination over what takes place in the school, and where teachers and school faculty engage as true partners with their students, families, and local community. Her dissertation research employed qualitative case study methodology to understand the ways in which teachers experienced transformation and inclusion through the school transformation process of becoming a community school.
At CRSP, Dr. Stuart McQueen continued her focus on teachers’ experiences through an equity-focused school transformation process, which provided her the opportunity to hone in on one aspect of community schooling: creating a positive and inclusive school environment. She began focusing on restorative justice, and the ways in which teachers might incorporate restorative justice into their daily teaching repertoire rather than viewing it is a singular programmatic element. At PSU, she has had the opportunity to merge her interest in restorative justice pedagogy with another component of her teaching life: mathematics! She will soon begin her first pilot research project with a set of teachers who are interested in using restorative justice in their practice, and are willing to engage their mathematics teaching practice to do so. As a researcher who centers teachers as critical agents in the strive toward equitable and liberatory learning environments for marginalized students, she draws on her experience as a middle school teacher, as a scholar of Ethnic Studies and Critical Race Theory, a Woman of Color, and as a human being who is dedicated to combating racism and intersections with gender, sexuality, ability, class, language, migration status and myriad other identity markers.