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C&I LECTURE | Faculty
"Beyond Beliefs" - Lani Horn discusses her research into the role of teacher communities in overcoming inequality ...
US NEWS | #7 2008
The College of Education rose to seventh place in this year's U.S. News & World Report rankings of graduate schools ...
News & Events
Feature Stories
Joe Lott: Two Sides to Every Story
Confidence, focus, and an understanding that every story has at least two sides: Dr. Joe Lott, a professor in the College of Education’s Educational Leadership and Policy Studies Department,
has learned much from his teachers. His seventh grade pre-algebra teacher, for instance, pulled an unfocused, middle-school boy into the present, teaching him confidence. His athletic mentors, particularly his middle school football coach, imbued him with mental clarity through discipline. And Lott’s college philosophy teacher taught him to see academic work through multiple lenses.
Under the guidance of such mentors, Lott challenged himself to excel far beyond his fellow students and to explore his own abilities. As with his journeys through pre-algebra and through athletics, he ended up learning a bit more about the world along the way.
“On an intellectual level, my college philosophy teacher changed my life,” recalls Lott. “Nobody had ever gotten an A in either of his courses, which I took as a challenge. In the end, not only did I get two A grades, but I learned that there are at least two sides to everything... two pieces to every story.”
Lott continues to lay the groundwork for his intellectual work, mapping out new territories and setting off to investigate those issues that lie closest to his own heart. His next research publication, slated for release in the Journal of Race, Class, and Gender, is titled, "Racial Identity and Black Students’ Perception of Civic Skills."
“I like the idea of investigating issues that are important to me, of setting my own methodological and theoretical parameters,” Lott states. “That particular aspect of research and approach to empiricism greatly appeals to me.”
His previous publications have dealt with civic education, civic responsibility, and civic engagement, largely grounded by thematic questions of racial identity. Underpinning these themes is an attention to service-learning and community service, which plants Lott’s work deep in the mission of the College of Education’s.
“I’d like to do research to better understand people’s and institution’s interpretation of citizenship,” he declares. “What does it mean to be a responsible citizen? How do we negotiate between the multiple selves – the public self, the private self, the civic self – and how does that relate to private notions?”
These are indeed focused, multi-sided questions for an institution like the University of Washington College of Education, where students and faculty work side-by-side to make learning a possibility for all. Over the next 10 years, Lott theorizes that the concepts of materialism and of individualism will bear a significant impact on education.
“Research shows that each generation is becoming more materialistic and more individualistic, and many students seek education in order to obtain marketable skills, which will ideally land them in higher paying jobs,” he believes. “In the future, as we talk about what it means to live in a global society, approaches to education increasingly focus on asking students to think critically about their own roles in society.”
When asked to identify what gives him hope about the current state of education, he doesn’t miss a beat with his answer: “Quite simply, that there is a large community of people who care.”
As a researcher who strives to understand the many sides of citizenship within our own society, Joe Lott brings quite a bit to the table – his strong professional background, his publication history, and, well suited for the College of Education, his concern for the well-being of humanity. As usual, he also brings the confidence, focus, and understanding that teachers once imparted to him.
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