Dr. Robyn Ilten-Gee

Assistant Professor, Faculty of Education

I supervise graduate students in Educational Psychology, Languages, Literacies & Cultures, and Equity Studies.

Research Interests

My primary research interests are in children's moral / social development and reasoning, critical and social justice pedagogy, and digital media. I take a critical approach to moral development, investigating ways in which a developmental framework can illuminate possibilities for critical pedagogy and critical moral reasoning.  I am especially interested in how digital media production (e.g. podcasting, multimedia journalism) in classroom settings facilitates a process of students rethinking and revising conclusions and judgments about the world and themselves.  As part of enacting critical moral development in the classroom, I am interested in culturally-sustaining frameworks of social-emotional education and strategies for responding to student trauma and chronic stress in educational environments. 

Moral Education for Social Justice

The authors draw from their work with teachers and students to address issues of social justice through the regular curriculum and everyday school life. This book illustrates an approach that integrates social justice education with contemporary research on students’ development of moral understandings and concerns for human welfare in order to critically address societal conventions, norms, and institutions. The authors provide a clear roadmap for differentiating moral education from religious beliefs and offer age-appropriate guidance for creating healthy school and classroom environments. Demonstrating how to engage students in critical thinking and community activism, the book includes proven-effective lessons that promote academic learning and moral growth for the early grades through adolescence. The text also incorporates recent work with social-emotional learning and restorative justice to nurture students’ ethical awareness and disrupt the school-to-prison pipeline.

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