Vonzell Agosto

RESEARCH AGENDA: Curriculum, Leadership, and Anti-Oppressive Education

Dr. Agosto's research agenda engages theories of social oppression in connection to curriculum and leadership. Her primary line of inquiry asks how educational contexts can be (more or less) oppressive especially with regard to culture, race, gender, and dis/ability. Dr. Agosto has presented her research at major conferences including the American Education Research Association, Curriculum and Pedagogy Conference, National Association of Multicultural Education, Bergamo, International Conference for Qualitative Inquiry, and the University Council of Education Administrators. Dr. Agosto’s publications include handbook chapters and articles in journals including Race Ethnicity & Education, Teachers College Record, Educational Researcher, Review of Research in Education, Journal of Curriculum Theorizing, Journal of Curriculum and Pedagogy, Journal of School Leadership, and the Journal of Research on Leadership Education.

Dr. Vonzell Agosto began her teaching career as a teacher's aide in a suburban day school for students who were diagnosed

as severely dis/abled. She later worked for several years in a comprehensive high school in Chicago as a special education

teacher and consultant in an inclusive education program in addition to self-contained and collaborative teaching settings. She continued teaching as a graduate teaching assistant for a Multicultural Learning Community Seminar at the University of Wisconsin - Madison where she earned her Ph.D.

in the Department of Curriculum and Instruction.

While a graduate student, Dr. Agosto trained in Theater of the Oppressed techniques and applied them as a facilitator of anti-racist workshops for community and campus organizations and conferences. She was awarded a fellowship at the University of Wisconsin Milwaukee's Institute on Race and Ethnicity during 2007-2008. She is acknowledged as an exemplary diversity scholar (2009-2010) by the National Center for Institutional Diversity at the University of Michigan Ann Arbor. In 2014 she was awarded the Teaching for Social Justice Award by the Leadership for Social Justice Special Interest Group of the American Educational Research Association (AERA) and the Emerging Scholar by the Critical Issues in Curriculum and Cultural Studies SIG in 2015.