Chris Leatherwood received his PhD. from Northwestern University’s School of Education and Social Policy in June 2022. As a mixed-methods, interdisciplinary scholar of race, equity, and ecological systems, he draws on various analytic and interpretive methods to study how systems interact to influence teacher practices and student engagement and learning. He has received advanced training in quasi-experimental methods as well as qualitative and ethnographic methodologies. Using these skills, he asks and answers questions about (a) the relationship between students’ dispositions toward errors, racial identity, and growth mindset; (b) how these are impacted by macro-level messages about race; (c) how teachers’ beliefs and attitudes about errors could indicate either an acceptance of or rejection of broader metanarratives around race and ability; and (d) how teachers’ orientations and dispositions toward errors influence their roles during discussions of student errors.
His teaching vision is one he has carried forward from his days of teaching middle school within the St. Louis Public School District. He firmly believes that an instructor’s role is not to impose his or her understanding on students but to draw out students’ inherent understandings. By doing such, he can use these understandings as a foundation for moving forward. He also believes that students learn as much from their peers as their instructor, so he encourages cooperative learning in which students are accountable to each other.
- Lecturer, “Race, Adolescence, and School Discipline.” School of Education and Social
- Policy, Northwestern University
- Lecturer, “Graduate Advanced Qualitative Methods.” School of Education and Social
- Policy, Northwestern University
- Lecturer, “Race and Education.” School of Education and Social Policy, Northwestern University
- Lecturer, “Field Research Methods.” School of Education and Social Policy, Northwestern University
- Lecturer, “Race, Adolescence, and School Discipline.” School of Education and Social Policy, Northwestern University
- Lecturer, “Culture and Cognition.” School of Education and Social Policy, Northwestern University
- Lecturer, “Graduate Field Methods.” School of Education and Social Policy, Northwestern University
- Co-Instructor, “Methods of Observing Human Behavior.” School of Education and
- Social Policy, Northwestern University.
- Error Exploration within Classroom Practice
- Equity Framework Enacted within Classrooms
- Teacher Education
- Classroom Discourse
- Ecological Systems
- 2021 Dobie, T. E., Leatherwood, C., & Sherin, M. G. (2021). A Look Inside Teacher-Captured Video. Journal of Technology and Teacher Education, 29(1), 45-66.
- 2021 Richards, J., Altshuler, M., Sherin, B. L., Sherin, M. G., & Leatherwood, C. J. Complexities and opportunities in teachers’ generation of videos from their own classrooms. Learning, Culture and Social Interaction, 28, 100490.
- 2018 Nzinga, K., Rapp, D., Leatherwood, C., Easterday, M., Rogers, L., Gallagher, N., Medin, D. Should social scientists be distanced from or engaged with the people they study? Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. 115(45). 11435-11441.
Between the years 2019 and 2022, he partnered with Simone Ispa-Landa and was awarded funding in the sum of $59,985 from the William T. Grant scholar program to research race and discipline in a midwestern high-school. This grant was also designed to support a mentoring relationship between he and Dr. Ispa-Landa . This relationship was structured in order for her to help guide Dr. Leatherwood in furthering his research interest, specifically in the creation of interview protocols and administering semi-structured interviews. This study was also linked to my previous research in which Dr. Leatherwood wanted to investigate how macrolevel messages around race could influence security staff microlevel interactions with students during passing periods.
Outstanding Instructor Award (Northwestern University)