About
Katie
Strom
Associate Professor, California State University, East Bay
My work is part of a global movement toward more complex, relational perspectives in education and beyond. Research-wise, I work with educators to develop complex perspectives about classrooms and teaching science. However, I also actively work to promote relational, supportive, and collective ways of doing academia through my mentorship of doctoral students as well as my initiatives in the larger field, including the Posthuman Nexus, which I co-founded, and the American Educational Research Association’s (AERA) Critical Posthuman and Postfoundational Studies in Education Special Interest Group (SIG), which I will chair through 2026.
I began my career teaching middle and high school history in San Diego. I received my PhD in Teacher Education and Teacher Development from Montclair State University, where I focused on social-justice oriented preparation for science teachers in urban settings, culturally and linguistically responsive teaching, and theories of complexity. After receiving my doctorate, I spent two years at WestEd as a research associate with the Quality Teaching for English Learners (QTEL) Initiative. There, I created and led professional development for teachers and leaders around powerful pedagogies for multilingual learners and conducted research with districts aiming to better support their multilingual learner preparation. I joined the faculty at CSU East Bay in 2015.
More About Me
I’m a teacher. Pedagogy is one of my passions. I strongly believe that teachers are well-positioned to disrupt historical, entrenched inequities in our society primarily affecting youth of color through teaching methods that affirm students’ knowledge, cultures, languages, and resources; connect to students’ lives/social contexts in meaningful ways; foster joint construction of understanding; provide ample opportunities for students to dialogue; and foster development of complex thinking skills. These translate into a core set of practices that drive my own pedagogical design of my classes and workshops.
I’m a writer and a mentor of writers. I had wonderful mentors who made visible the rules of the scholarly writing process, and becoming an expert in these rules has enabled me to successfully publish in premier journals. However, my own success also builds on my multiple privileges, including the linguistic capital that comes along with being part of the white middle class and having college-educated parents. Over time, I have built on my expertise regarding scaffolding academic language and literacy for multilingual learners and translated it into a framework and curriculum for doctoral level writing grounded in systemic functional linguistics (making explicit the purpose and patterns of language in specific genres).
I’m a scholar. My research interests include the critical preparation of teachers and leaders (especially in science), critical posthuman/neo-materialist theories, critical sociocultural pedagogies/pedagogies for multilingual learners, academic writing, and autoethnographic/intimate forms of scholarship. My research has appeared in more than 20 peer-reviewed journals, including the Journal of Teacher Education, Teachers College Record, and Equity and Excellence in Education. I am also the author of multiple books, the most recent of which is Scaffolding the Language of Power: An Apprenticeship in Writing at the Doctoral Level.