M3 People

Theresa Catalano, PhD

ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR

Theresa Catalano is Associate Professor of Second Language Education/Applied Linguistics in the Department of Teaching, Learning and Teacher Education. Her research interests overlap in several important ways with the aims of M3. First, Theresa is dedicated to examining the connection between migration and education, namely through preparing teachers to work with students with (im)migrant backgrounds. In her book Talking about Global Migration (Multilingual Matters, 2016), she interviews migrants from around the world analyzing their discourse by looking at the metaphors they use to describe their experiences, and then providing implications for teachers. She is also interested in the experiences of multilingual students and teachers and how they draw on their languages in learning (Catalano, Traore Moundiba, & Pir, 2019; Catalano & Hamann, 2016; Catalano, Shende & Suh, 2016). Additionally, she is committed to the integration of arts-based education and is currently working on several projects which show how arts-based interventions can be used to improve and enrich the education of newcomer students, but also better prepare teachers to work with them (Catalano & Leonard, 2016). Finally, Theresa employs critical discourse analysis/studies to analyze anti-immigration discourse in the US (Catalano 2013, 2016, 2017), discourse about dual language programs (Catalano & Moeller, 2013 Liu & Catalano, 2015), the border patrol/unaccompanied child migrants (Catalano & Musolff, 2019; Catalano & Mitchell-McCollough, 2019), right-wing populism, immigration and the Roma (Catalano, 2014; Fielder & Catalano 2017; Catalano & Fielder 2018), and the way preservice students talk about emergent multilinguals they interact with in their practicums (Catalano, Reeves, & Wessels, 2018). Besides discourse in the US Theresa has examined immigration discourse in South Africa (Catalano, Fox & Vandeyar, 2016) and Italy (Catalano 2018).

Lauren Gatti, PhD

ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR

My research focuses on the intersection of teacher education, teacher education policy, and democratic education. I am particularly interested in how novice English teachers learn to teach within particular policy contexts, whether that is in Lincoln, Nebraska or Chicago, Illinois. I am keenly interested in how we prepare teachers to think historically and critically about what it means to educate (versus “school”) and, relatedly, how we prepare teachers to enact pedagogies and engage students in humanizing and critical ways. My belief is that the hard work of justice-oriented teacher education is unromantic, incremental, and slow but that it is a crucial space of resistance and transformation for both teacher educators and novice teachers.

My work intersects with the larger aims and commitments of the M3 initiative in a couple of important ways: 1) my work is interested in how race, social class, and other kinds of social positionings shape the learning to teach process, and 2) my work is committed to understanding what kinds of programs and pedagogies in teacher preparation might result in more just and equitable experiences for youth in schools, especially racially and linguistically minoritized students.

Edmund (Ted) Hamann

PROFESSOR

Dr. Hamann's primary scholarly interests are in three overlapping areas: (1) how transnational movement of students and families is responded to by schools (particularly movement between the U.S. and Latin America); (2) how educational policies are cultural productions transformed in their conversion to practice (particularly collaboration across tiers of the educational system, like state departments of education working with schools); and (3) how school reform is/is not responsive to various student populations (particularly transnationally mobile students and English language learners). More than 50 of Dr. Hamann's publications, including his graduate students' theses and dissertations, can be accessed through UNL Digital Commons using the search term "Edmund T. Hamann."

Lydiah Kananu Kiramba, PhD

ASSISTANT PROFESSOR

Dr. Lydiah Kiramba is an assistant professor of educational linguistics at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Dr. Kiramba’s research examines communicative practices of multilingual students in super-diverse classrooms, and, literacies of migrants, immigrants and multilingual populations in K-12 classrooms. Her continuing study investigates multilingual competencies among multilingual children of migrant and refugee backgrounds who are emerging multilinguals (often called ELL). Dr. Kiramba teaches graduate and undergraduate courses in Applied Linguistics, Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages TESOL), and Multilingual education in the department of Teaching, Learning and Teacher Education.

Ursula Nguyen, PhD

ASSISTANT PROFESSOR

Ursula Nguyen is an Assistant Professor in Elementary Mathematics Education in the Department of Teaching, Learning & Teacher Education (TLTE), College of Education and Human Sciences at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Her research broadly focuses on issues of equity in STEM education at the intersection of race/ethnicity and gender.

Her current research involves two main lines of inquiry. The first investigates instructional practices that promote equity in STEM. The second centers the views and experiences of historically excluded learners, such as young women and Students of Color, in STEM spaces. As such, she is committed to supporting pre-service teachers in better serving culturally and linguistically diverse students. Dr. Nguyen’s research and teaching commitments stem from her past experiences as a Bilingual learner and educator in Houston, TX.

Loukia K. Sarroub, PhD

PROFESSOR AND GRADUATE CHAIR

I am interested in exploring language-in-use and academic literacies as sociolinguistic, cultural, and social phenomena. My scholarship focuses on how young people, their teachers, and families engage in discourse about achievement and how education policy decisions are enacted at all levels of schooling, thus influencing agency among key players (students, parents, teachers, schools).

Stephanie Wessels, PhD

ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR

Stephanie Wessels is an associate professor at the Department of Teaching, Learning and Teacher Education at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. For the past several years, Dr. Wessels’ coursework, research, and teaching have focused on literacy development for young multilingual learners and their families. She teaches in the areas of early childhood, early literacy, and English as a second language education. Specifically, she is interested in vocabulary development that enhances and extends current academic practices in the primary grade-level classrooms as well as family literacies practices. She has conducted bilingual family literacy programs which built on literacy practices of the home and extended those practices into school-based literacy skills. Currently, she is focusing on digital family literacy programs where multilingual parents become digital storytellers on mobile devices. Along with her colleagues at Kansas State University, she published a book entitled Accelerating literacy for diverse learners: Strategies for the common core classrooms, K-8 with Teacher College Press. In addition, her work has appeared in The Reading Teacher, TESOL Journal, The School Community Journal, Early Childhood Education Journal and Young Children.