Academic labor in the third space, [Special Issue] Workplace: A Journal of Academic Labor, 34/3 (2023): 19-22

This special issue argues that there is a expanding group of academic professionals working in “Third Spaces” between traditional faculty roles and administrative roles, such as in advising, writing centers, and teaching support, who make valuable contributions but lack recognition and support structures. The article calls for greater inclusion of these “Third Space professionals” in discourses and policies related to academic labor.

The critically reflective practicum, Honors In Practice, 18 (2022): 97-119.

This article introduces the “critically reflective practicum” (CRP) as a pedagogical method for developing undergraduate honors students’ critical disciplinary literacy by providing scaffolded, experiential learning opportunities within a discipline along with critical reflection on the methods, assumptions, and sociocultural contexts of that discipline. The goal is to empower students to understand, engage with, critique, and reconstruct academic knowledge production.

Honors as third space occupation, Journal of the National Collegiate Honors Council, 22/1 (2021): 43-52.

The article argues that honors education should be understood as a “third space” profession that produces transdisciplinary “Mode 2” knowledge rather than trying to fit it into the traditional academic/non-academic binary, allowing it to occupy a non-binary position to disrupt and transform the academy. Honors utilizes diverse perspectives to address real-world problems in creative ways that traditional disciplinary approaches cannot.

Traditional and critical mentoring, Radical Teacher, 119 (2021): 52-62.

The article argues that traditional undergraduate peer mentoring programs focus on assimilating students into existing institutional cultures and values, whereas a critical mentoring approach aims to empower students by fostering critical consciousness of institutional values and cultures and enabling them to respond dialectically. It presents a model of critical mentoring pedagogy and practice grounded in critical theory and the experiences of former critical mentors.

A case for critical interdisciplinarity, Issues in Interdisciplinary Studies, 38/1-2 (2020): 33-56.

The article argues that critical interdisciplinarity, framed as a form of democratic dialogue rather than a phase within instrumental interdisciplinary research, can disrupt the anti-dialogical structures of higher education and foster self-understanding, democratic pedagogies, and the overall achievement of democratic aims within colleges and universities. It illustrates this through a faculty development program at Colorado College based on interdisciplinary dialogue.

Dewey’s naturalized epistemology and the possibility of sustainable knowledge, The Pluralist, 15/2 (2020): 82-96.

The article argues that the proliferation of academic knowledge is unsustainable. Sustainable knowledge requires reconceptualizing academic research to be more entangled with practice and involve creative action rather than mental representation – drawing on Dewey’s naturalized epistemology and the “maker’s knowledge” tradition. This shifts the aim of research from producing theoretical knowledge to maker’s knowledge that is higher quality, socially engaged, and self-limiting.

Critical inquiry and the first year: Reconceptualizing the aims of transitions pedagogies, in Journal of General Education, 66/3-4 (2019): 99-113.

The article argues that traditional first-year pedagogies focused on core academic skills training fail to empower students’ critical capacities and identities. Instead, a framework called “critical inquiry” is proposed that confronts the hidden cultures and constructs of knowledge production in the disciplines and reproduction in the classroom/curriculum to establish a dialogical relationship enabling students to gain intellectual agency.

Dewey’s creative ontology: Inquiry as social-self creation, in Journal of Thought, Fall/Winter (2018): 47-64.

The article argues that Dewey’s theory of inquiry is not simply an active learning strategy but a process of social-self creation grounded in his transactional metaphysics and emergent view of the self; through transforming indeterminate situations, meanings, and selves, inquiry reconstructs reality and cannot be reduced to acquiring preexistent facts and skills. This conceptualization demands organizing education to directly engage students in inquiry as a way of empowering their agency and growth.

The flipped curriculum: Dewey’s pragmatic university, in Studies in Philosophy and Education, 37/5 (2018): 451-465.

The article argues that while the “flipped classroom” improves higher education pedagogy, John Dewey’s philosophy demands a more radical “flipped curriculum” that situates students and their inquiries at the center of a coherent educational experience integrating curriculum, pedagogy, and co-curriculum.

Theory and resistance in Honors education, in Occupying Honors Education, edited by Lisa Coleman and Jon Kotinek, 2-32 (National Collegiate Honors Council Monograph, 2017).

The article argues that honors education should “occupy” the academy by developing critical theories and practices that resist neoliberal logic and structures to create more participatory, democratic, and justice-oriented forms of education; it draws parallels to the Occupy Movement and suggests critical pedagogy as one framework for this occupation. The goal is to empower students and reconstruct higher education around humanization and freedom.

Toward an aesthetics of creative practice, Journal of Aesthetics and Phenomenology, 4/1 (2017): 45-56.

The article argues for an aesthetics of creative practice that draws creative practices to the center of philosophical aesthetics, engaging issues originating from artistic practices themselves rather than just the art object or observer’s experience; this would give aesthetics a role in understanding and enhancing creative action both within and beyond traditional artistic fields. The goal is to illuminate the material, conceptual, and cultural dimensions of creative practices.

The theory gap in higher education, Research in Education, 96/1 (2016): 39-45.

The article argues that while theory is vital in disciplinary contexts, contemporary higher education policies and practices operate in a “theory gap” devoid of meaningful theoretical awareness or engagement, with negative consequences; this gap leaves institutions vulnerable to outside forces and unable to deeply problematize or imagine alternatives.

Time and the creative act, Transactions of the C. S. Peirce Society: A Quarterly Journal in American Philosophy, 52/1 (2016): 47-61.

The article argues that a major error in aesthetic theory is the failure to account for art as a creative act emerging from the temporal flow of lived experience; it makes the case that creative action is only possible because it is a temporally emergent process that is qualitative, contingent, and transactional. This shifts the focus in aesthetics from art products to creative practices.

Taylorism and the logic of learning outcomes, Journal of Curriculum Studies, 47/3 (2015): 317-333.

The article argues that the contemporary learning outcomes movement in American higher education shares the same philosophical infrastructure as Frederick Taylor’s scientific management principles. Just as Taylorism attempted to create an idealized industrial ordering, the learning outcomes movement seeks an educational ordering through predefined skills and traits rather than recognizing the creativity and variability of the learning process.

Educating from failure: Dewey’s aesthetics and the case for failure in educational theory, The Journal of Aesthetic Education, 47/1 (2013): 22-35.

This article argues that failure must be taken seriously as a legitimate part of the teaching and learning process. It examines the experience of failure as a profound opportunity to help students cultivate their creative capacities. Just as beauty matters in education, so too does engaging the dynamic interplay of harmony and disharmony central to growth.

Outcomes-based education: a philosophical critique, South Atlantic Philosophy of Education Society Yearbook (2013): 96-106.

Learning justice in the aristocratic classroom, South Atlantic Philosophy of Education Society Yearbook (2012): 78-87.

Communities of practice and ways of knowing: reclaiming Bildung in university education, SPECTRA, 1/2 (2011): 15-20.