Marguerite Wilson

Visiting Assistant Professor

Office: University Downtown Center, Room 417
Office Phone:  (607) 777-9238
Fax: (607) 777-7587
E-mail: mwilson@binghamton.edu

Dr. Marguerite Wilson (Visiting Assistant Professor of Human Development) has an interdisciplinary research agenda spanning the disciplines of human development, anthropology, gender studies, critical theory, and education. Her research, situated in multiple school and non-school contexts, focuses on innovative approaches to ethnographically understanding the relationships between cultural constructions of childhood, language socialization, social reproduction, power and pedagogy, and the intersecting identity formations of gender, race, and class. Dr. Wilson received her Ph.D. 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 simultaneous limitations of the Sudbury pedagogical approach as a private school ultimately focused on socialization of an elite class of students. The ultimate goal of Dr. Wilson's research is to understand the larger cultural processes underpinning educational practices as a foundation for developing innovative ways to alleviate social and educational inequalities.

Educational Background

• Ph.D. Education (Language, Literacy, and Culture), University of California, Davis
• M.A. Education, University of California, Davis
• B.A. Psychology and Education, University of California, Santa Cruz

Teaching Profession

Courses developed and regularly taught:

• HDEV 335: Gender, Development, and Education
• HDEV 305: Child Development

Current & Ongoing Research Interests

• Ethnographic approaches to understanding and alleviating educational inequalities
• Language socialization of children, cultural contexts of child development and constructions of childhood
• Power, participation, and pedagogy in alternative school communities of practice
• Intersectionality of race, class, and gender in schools, communities, and cultures
• Critical pedagogy, transformation, and radical egalitarianism in teaching-learning relationships

Selected Publications

• Wilson, M. A. F. (2011). "Their play is different": Power, language, and gender socialization at a Waldorf daycare. In Irby, B., & Brown, G. H. (eds.), Gender and Early Learning Environments, pp. 1-28. Charlotte, NC: Information Age Publishing.
• Bartlett, L., Johnson, L, López, D., Sugarman, E., & Wilson, M. (May 2005). Teacher Induction in the Midwest: Illinois, Wisconsin, and Ohio. University of California, Santa Cruz. (Commissioned by the UCSC New Teacher Center.)