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Background

Marguerite Wilson is an anthropologist of education whose research agenda focuses on ethnographically understanding and transforming the cultural conditions in schools that produce inequitable outcomes. Using the methodological tools of critical ethnography, discourse analysis, and the theoretical lenses of critical race theory (CRT) and critical whiteness studies (CWS), Wilson’s research seeks to understand the (re)production of both educational advantage and disadvantage.

Wilson received her PhD in education from the University of California, Davis, with an emphasis in Language, Literacy, and Culture. Her dissertation, an ethnographic study of a radically alternative Sudbury school, focused on the transformative possibilities and limitations of the Sudbury pedagogical approach as a private school ultimately focused on socialization of an elite class of students. Her current collaborative work is focused on understanding and interrupting the national trend of racialized disciplinary practices in schools through an innovative approach to parent engagement. This approach facilitates the co-creation of empowering spaces for parents of color who have been marginalized by the school system to become change agents in the schools their children attend.

Education

• BA, University of California - Santa Cruz
• MA, PhD, University of California - Davis

Research Interests

• Educational inequalities
• Cultural contexts of child development
• Whiteness and privilege
• Ethnography and discourse analysis