Barbara Rogoff, Distinguished Professor of Psychology at UC Santa Cruz, gave a talk at UC Davis titled “Learning Through Pitching In.” The 2012-13 Distinguished Educational Thinkers Speaker Series is co-hosted by the UC Davis School of Education, Graduate Group in Education and the School of Education Alumni Annual Fund. Lectures are free to the public.

As part of the UC Davis School of Education’s Distinguished Educational Thinker Series, Professor Guadelupe Valdés gave a talk at UC Davis in January 2013 titled “Understanding Language in Schools.” Valdés argues that English learners must be given access to grade level content while they are learning English. “Writing is about ideas, but we pretend with English learners that language must emerge pristine before they can engage in the academic content. We must push for comprehension before focusing on production because it is most important for learning.”

As part of the School’s Critical Consciousness Speaker Series, Professor and high school English teacher Jeff Duncan-Andrade, Ph.D. gave a talk at UC Davis titled “Note to Educators: Hope Required When Growing Roses in Concrete.” Duncan-Andrade is associate professor of Raza Studies and Education at San Francisco State University and Director of the Educational Equity Initiative at the Institute for Sustainable Economic, Educational, and Environmental Design (ISEEED).