Biographical notes
Richard Sawyer (Volume editor)
Wanying Wang (Volume editor)
Daniel Ness (Volume editor)
Richard Sawyer focuses on reflexive and transformative curriculum within transnational contexts, especially those related to education, identity, and neo-liberalism. He co-developed a critical self-study methodology, called duoethnography. In 2015 he received the outstanding book award for this qualitative methodology from Division D of the American Educational Research Association. In addition, he studies how educators begin to change their thinking and their teaching in relation to diversity. He has published articles on perceptions (and ways to unfreeze perceptions) of educators in the United States on Palestinians living in refugee camps and individuals resisting NAFTA in Mexico. He has recently begun publishing on how teachers develop democratic and collaborative visions for public education. He was a longtime co-editor of the Northwest Journal of Teacher Education.
Wanying Wang is Visiting Assistant Professor at St. John’s University. Prior to this, she was a post-doctoral researcher at the University of British Columbia. Dr. Wang holds two PhD degrees, the first from the University of Hong Kong and the second from the University of British Columbia. Her research areas include, but are not limited to, curriculum theory, phenomenology, psychoanalysis, attunement, teacher education, educational leadership, curriculum innovation in higher education, sociology of education, and social and cultural analysis of educational issues. She has published numerous journal articles, book chapters and two books. She is currently serving on several editorial boards of journals specializing in curriculum.
Daniel Ness is a professor at St. John’s University in New York received his PhD from Columbia University in 2001. His research focuses on the areas of curriculum reconceptualization, spatial cognition, and teacher identity construction. His book, Block Parties (Routledge), published in 2022, examines the efficacy of a wide array of play media and their levels of affordance, and his edited book, Alternatives to Privatizing Public Education and Curriculum (Routledge), was awarded the 2018 Society of Professors of Education Outstanding Book Award.
