Rhiannon M . Maton
Rhiannon M. Maton, Ph.D is a qualitative researcher whose primary area of research focuses on teachers' work and unions in preK-16 education.
Dr. Maton currently serves as Associate Professor in the Foundations and Social Advocacy department in the SUNY Cortland School of Education, and as Visiting Scholar (2024-2025) in the Hunter College (CUNY) National Center for the Study of Collective Bargaining in Higher Education and the Professions. Prior to this, she was faculty in University of Pennsylvania’s Critical Writing Program and taught in traditional and alternative public and private high schools in Canada and the United States for over ten years. She has also provided professional advocacy and direct support services to children and teenagers experiencing economic hardship, homelessness, and physical dis/Ability.
Dr. Maton's expertise ranges from issues of teacher learning and leadership, grassroots organizing and mobilization, alternative school issues and models, activist teachers, teacher unions, and race, class, gender and sexuality issues in education. Her work has appeared in various journals and book volumes, including Teachers College Record, Gender Work and Organization, Curriculum Inquiry, and the History of Education Quarterly.
Her research focuses on how educators and schools can better support students facing systemic social and economic marginalization. The first strand of this research examines educator engagement and learning in grassroots activism and union organizing in response to student, family and community need and broader systemic barriers. The second strand explores how public alternative school models might be mobilized to provide a more responsive and critical education. And, the third strand focuses on how teacher education can support educators in developing increasingly inquisitive and critical mindsets toward their work with students, families and communities. Her work has appeared in various journals and book volumes, including Curriculum Inquiry, Critical Studies in Education and the Journal of Educational Change.
She was the 2023 recipient of the Di Nardo and Waring Outstanding Achievement in Research Award, and currently serves on the advisory boards for Workplace: A Journal for Academic Labor, the Urban Education Justice Project (Towson University), Sophia's Garden Institute (SUNY Cortland). She is the Past Co-Chair of the Teacher's Work/Teachers' Unions Special Interest Group of the American Educational Research Association. And she has served in a range of editorial leadership roles, currently including serving as Co-Editor of the Critical Perspectives on Teaching and Teachers' Work book series for Routledge and the upcoming (2025) Routledge Handbook on Teachers' Work: International Perspectives on Research and Practice.
Dr. Maton currently serves as Associate Professor in the Foundations and Social Advocacy department in the SUNY Cortland School of Education, and as Visiting Scholar (2024-2025) in the Hunter College (CUNY) National Center for the Study of Collective Bargaining in Higher Education and the Professions. Prior to this, she was faculty in University of Pennsylvania’s Critical Writing Program and taught in traditional and alternative public and private high schools in Canada and the United States for over ten years. She has also provided professional advocacy and direct support services to children and teenagers experiencing economic hardship, homelessness, and physical dis/Ability.
Dr. Maton's expertise ranges from issues of teacher learning and leadership, grassroots organizing and mobilization, alternative school issues and models, activist teachers, teacher unions, and race, class, gender and sexuality issues in education. Her work has appeared in various journals and book volumes, including Teachers College Record, Gender Work and Organization, Curriculum Inquiry, and the History of Education Quarterly.
Her research focuses on how educators and schools can better support students facing systemic social and economic marginalization. The first strand of this research examines educator engagement and learning in grassroots activism and union organizing in response to student, family and community need and broader systemic barriers. The second strand explores how public alternative school models might be mobilized to provide a more responsive and critical education. And, the third strand focuses on how teacher education can support educators in developing increasingly inquisitive and critical mindsets toward their work with students, families and communities. Her work has appeared in various journals and book volumes, including Curriculum Inquiry, Critical Studies in Education and the Journal of Educational Change.
She was the 2023 recipient of the Di Nardo and Waring Outstanding Achievement in Research Award, and currently serves on the advisory boards for Workplace: A Journal for Academic Labor, the Urban Education Justice Project (Towson University), Sophia's Garden Institute (SUNY Cortland). She is the Past Co-Chair of the Teacher's Work/Teachers' Unions Special Interest Group of the American Educational Research Association. And she has served in a range of editorial leadership roles, currently including serving as Co-Editor of the Critical Perspectives on Teaching and Teachers' Work book series for Routledge and the upcoming (2025) Routledge Handbook on Teachers' Work: International Perspectives on Research and Practice.
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Publications: Teacher Activism and Unions
The published article is also available online: https://www.tandfonline.com/eprint/IX2scMxZYKjCCi499QG8/full
This dissertation asks: When politically active teachers come together in an inquiry group to discuss structural racism, how do they engage in individual and collective learning processes? And, how do they perceive the shape, form and effect of their learning? Methodologically, the study draws from participatory (Cochran-Smith & Lytle, 2009; McIntyre, 2008) and race feminist (Delgado-Bernal, 1998; Smith, 1987) qualitative research traditions. The study examines the work of an inquiry group composed of nine racially and gender diverse participant who are active members of a change-seeking union caucus. Data sources include inquiry group meetings, interviews, field notes and written texts.
The dissertation builds a new theory for understanding the nature, form and function of teachers’ collaborative learning about racial justice. This study defines collaborative learning as the collective and social search for knowledge and transformation, and shows that it is composed of four interconnected and mutually reliant components: learning, pedagogy, relationships, and diffusion. Furthermore, the study finds that inquiry-based collaboration among politically active teachers, on projects where the goal is to build a common mission, vision and project, and where there is diversity in race, gender and a range of experiences with prejudice and discrimination, holds great potential for triggering teacher learning and addressing social justice issues within and beyond activist organizations and schools.
Publications: Alternative Models of Schooling
Publications: Teacher Education and Equity
Between early 2020 and today, our society has experienced a distressing global pandemic, horrifying brutalities committed against BIPOC individuals and communities, uprisings for racial justice, and a violent attack on our nation’s capital. While these events and phenomena have been challenging and traumatic, they have also inspired calls for equity-focused action within and beyond schools.
Purpose:
Many schools have intensified their diversity, equity, inclusion, justice, and anti-racism (DEIJA) work by revising their curricula, providing equity-focused professional development for educators, offering extracurricular programs like affinity and accountability spaces for BIPOC and white students, and many other initiatives. However, this work has occurred against a contentious backdrop, including parent and caregiver resistance to DEIJA work and attacks on schools for allegedly teaching critical race theory.
Research Design:
Between the summer of 2020 and the spring of 2022, we conducted research with one independent school, called the Waterford School, in a metropolitan area as it engaged in intensified DEIJA work. During this time, we surveyed and ran focus groups with caregivers, students, faculty, staff, and administrators to capture their experiences with and perspectives on school DEIJA work. White caregivers were the most vocal and resistant constituent group, and in this article, we examine the perspectives that they brought to these conversations on Waterford’s DEIJA initiatives.
Conclusions:
This analysis shows how, in both their support of and dissent to the DEIJA work, white caregivers’ perspectives often reflected and reinforced characteristics associated with white supremacy culture (WSC). We also show how caregivers’ perspectives on the DEIJA work and pressure on Waterford often posed racial equity detours, which created an illusion of progress toward racial equity while obscuring ongoing racial inequity.
The published article is also available online: https://www.tandfonline.com/eprint/IX2scMxZYKjCCi499QG8/full
This dissertation asks: When politically active teachers come together in an inquiry group to discuss structural racism, how do they engage in individual and collective learning processes? And, how do they perceive the shape, form and effect of their learning? Methodologically, the study draws from participatory (Cochran-Smith & Lytle, 2009; McIntyre, 2008) and race feminist (Delgado-Bernal, 1998; Smith, 1987) qualitative research traditions. The study examines the work of an inquiry group composed of nine racially and gender diverse participant who are active members of a change-seeking union caucus. Data sources include inquiry group meetings, interviews, field notes and written texts.
The dissertation builds a new theory for understanding the nature, form and function of teachers’ collaborative learning about racial justice. This study defines collaborative learning as the collective and social search for knowledge and transformation, and shows that it is composed of four interconnected and mutually reliant components: learning, pedagogy, relationships, and diffusion. Furthermore, the study finds that inquiry-based collaboration among politically active teachers, on projects where the goal is to build a common mission, vision and project, and where there is diversity in race, gender and a range of experiences with prejudice and discrimination, holds great potential for triggering teacher learning and addressing social justice issues within and beyond activist organizations and schools.
Between early 2020 and today, our society has experienced a distressing global pandemic, horrifying brutalities committed against BIPOC individuals and communities, uprisings for racial justice, and a violent attack on our nation’s capital. While these events and phenomena have been challenging and traumatic, they have also inspired calls for equity-focused action within and beyond schools.
Purpose:
Many schools have intensified their diversity, equity, inclusion, justice, and anti-racism (DEIJA) work by revising their curricula, providing equity-focused professional development for educators, offering extracurricular programs like affinity and accountability spaces for BIPOC and white students, and many other initiatives. However, this work has occurred against a contentious backdrop, including parent and caregiver resistance to DEIJA work and attacks on schools for allegedly teaching critical race theory.
Research Design:
Between the summer of 2020 and the spring of 2022, we conducted research with one independent school, called the Waterford School, in a metropolitan area as it engaged in intensified DEIJA work. During this time, we surveyed and ran focus groups with caregivers, students, faculty, staff, and administrators to capture their experiences with and perspectives on school DEIJA work. White caregivers were the most vocal and resistant constituent group, and in this article, we examine the perspectives that they brought to these conversations on Waterford’s DEIJA initiatives.
Conclusions:
This analysis shows how, in both their support of and dissent to the DEIJA work, white caregivers’ perspectives often reflected and reinforced characteristics associated with white supremacy culture (WSC). We also show how caregivers’ perspectives on the DEIJA work and pressure on Waterford often posed racial equity detours, which created an illusion of progress toward racial equity while obscuring ongoing racial inequity.
Exploring Gender and LGBTQ Issues in K-12 and Teacher Education: A Rainbow Assemblage Author(s): Adrian D. Martin & Kathryn J. Strom Publisher: Information Age Publishing, Charlotte ISBN: 1641136170, Pages: 202, Year: 2019
Throughout this contentious time, the Caucus of Working Educators, a social justice caucus seeking to push its union toward stronger member engagement and assertive resistance to austerity and school privatization, has done much of the behind-the-scenes work to support union members and advocate for safe and healthy schools.
In this interview, Rhiannon Maton, an assistant professor at SUNY Cortland and former active supporting member of the Caucus, interviews Daniel Symonds, a high school social studies teacher in the district and active Caucus of Working Educators member. The interview took place on Sunday, March 14, and discusses what teaching has looked like during Covid-19, union response and organizing in the face of school reopening, and the complex relationship between the union and a caucus vying for power.