Quentin Sedlacek

Dr. Quentin Sedlacek is Assistant Professor of STEM Education at Southern Methodist University. He holds a Ph.D. in Race, Inequality, and Language in Education and Teacher Education from Stanford University.

Quentin’s research is directly informed by his teaching experiences. Prior to entering academia, he worked for five years as a science and mathematics educator in Mississippi and American Sāmoa, where he taught STEM in schools that primarily served African American and Pacific Islander students. He saw how racism, colonialism, sexism, and other systems of oppression worked against his students (and many of his colleagues) while privileging his own White male positionality. He grew concerned with understanding how systems of oppression are reproduced through language—how deficit narratives about students of color in the South Pacific can sound eerily similar to deficit narratives about students of color in the Deep South, in communities that are (quite literally) ten thousand kilometers apart. Dr. Sedlacek joined academia in order to understand and contest these narratives and help teachers advance asset-based, justice-oriented alternatives. His work has appeared in IJSE and JWG, and he recently received a Small Research Grant from the Spencer Foundation to study science teachers’ experiences learning about AAL.

ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3413-8548
Personal Website: http://quentinsedlacek.com
Twitter: https://twitter.com/TeacherSedlacek