Dr. Sherry L. Deckman is an assistant professor of education with primary teaching responsibilities for social and cultural foundations of education. Her current research explores how undergraduate students from diverse backgrounds negotiate race, class, and gender while participating in culturally focused performing arts groups. She is also interested in how educators are formally prepared to work with students from diverse race and class backgrounds and how educators address issues of race, class, and gender inequity in schools. Dr. Deckman's research and teaching interests broadly include teacher education, urban education, diversity in higher education, gender and sexuality in K-16 schools, qualitative research, and social justice and education.
Dr. Deckman is a graduate of the Culture, Communities and Education program at the Harvard Graduate School of Education (HGSE). Prior to matriculating to HGSE, she worked for Teach For America in New York City and has been a high school teacher in Washington, DC and Fukuoka, Japan, a student teacher advisor in Boston and Cambrige, MA, and a public school volunteer in Philadelphia.
Dr. Deckman's selected publications include “But What Can I Do? Three Necessary Tensions in Teaching Teachers about Race” (co-author with Pollock, Mira, and Shalaby, Journal of Teacher Education, 2009) and Humanizing Education: Critical Alternatives to Reform (co-editor, Harvard Educational Press, 2010).