Dr. Angela Valenzuela, a renowned education policy expert, has committed to speak at the Literacy Research Association’s 72nd Annual Meeting to be held at the Arizona Grand Resort from November 29 – December 3, 2022.
Dr. Valenzuela is a professor in both the Cultural Studies in Education Program within the Department of Curriculum & Instruction and the Educational Policy and Planning Program within the Department of Education Leadership and Policy at the University of Texas at Austin where she also serves as the director of the Texas Center for Education Policy. She is also the author of award-winning Subtractive Schooling: U.S. Mexican Youth and the Politics of Caring(1999) Leaving Children Behind: How “Texas-style” Accountability Fails Latino Youth (2005), and Growing Critically Conscious Teachers: A Social Justice Curriculum for Educators of Latino/a Youth (Teachers College Press, 2016). She also founded and operates an education blog titled, Educational Equity, Politics, and Policy in Texas.
Valenzuela’s research and teaching interests are in the sociology of education, minority youth in schools, educational policy, urban education reform, culturally relevant curriculum, Ethnic Studies, and indigenous education. Dr. Valenzuela’s presentation on the “Struggles for Inclusive Curriculum, Ethnic Studies, and Academic Freedom: Scholars’ Responses to the Conservative Backlash in Texas,” fits seamlessly with the conference theme of “Crossing Boundaries and Borders: In Pursuit of Equity, Solidarity and, Social Justice.”
“We could not be more thrilled to have Dr. Valenzuela as one of our plenary speakers,” said LRA Conference Chair Dr. Doris Walker-Dalhouse. “Her efforts in Texas embody the conference theme as she pursues equity, solidarity, and social justice in her scholarship, research, and service within her local and state communities.”
Against the backdrop of the robust Ethnic Studies Movement in Texas in the quest for curricular inclusion in Texas classrooms and textbooks, Valenzuela will talk about the conservative backlash to these efforts that took form during the (2021) 87th Texas Regular Legislative Session in the form of House Bill 3979, a bill that inaugurated the right-wing movement against the so-called teaching of Critical Race Theory (CRT) in K-12 education coupled with a ban on books addressing content that the Texas GOP finds objectionable.
Registration for the 2022 72nd Annual Conference meeting will open later this summer. For more information, please visit literacyresearchassociation.org/current-conference.