Learning in Adulthood & Planning Education and Development Programs for Adults - Rosemary Caffarella
Two major foci to Professor Caffarella's research agenda include: learning in adulthood, and planning education and development programs for adults. Representative of these two major strands of her research are two of her recent books: Learning in Adulthood, 3rd Ed. (2007), co-authored with Sharan Merriam and Lisa Buamgartner; and Planning Programs for Adult Learners, 2nd Ed, (2002). Her current major project, the Malaysian Breast Cancer Initiative, combines both of these content areas. The major goal of this project is to provide a sustainable breast cancer education program developed primarily by Malaysians for Malaysians that can be used as a model for other developing nations. In conjunction with this goal it has been critical to take into account the cultural, ethnic, religious, and linguistic differences among the peoples of Malaysia as learners. Similar factors have also influenced the way we plan programs and activities, in addition to addressing the importance of power relations, continually changing environments, and ethical practice.

Agricultural Education Curriculum & Program Planning - William Camp
Professor Camp has worked in research on agricultural education curriculum and program planning his entire career. For the past 20 years he has specialized in professional development of teachers as they progress through the teaching career. He is involved in the development of a technical assessment system for Agricultural Science Education in New York State. Professor Camp is a mixed-methods research, with extensive skills and experience in both qualitative and quantitative research methods.

Research Methodology & Evaluation Design - Mark Constas
Professor Constas believes science, as both an epistemological orientation and as a set of technical practices, offers one foundation upon which research methodologies and evaluation designs may be based. In the field of education, recognition of inequalities in schools, the seeming recalcitrance of many educational problems, and the need for meaningful and immediate action often suggest an alternative epistemological orientation that require an alternative set of technical practices. The alternative to conventional science is typically supported by political arguments that reflect a commitment to democratic ideals and by the everyday needs of the various practitioner communities that constitute education. Professor Constas' interest in research methodology and evaluation design is motivated by a mission to develop data collection and data analytic techniques that both reflect the values of scientific inquiry and acknowledge the political realities and practical contexts of education. His research activities include: scientific inquiry and the practice of education research, qualitative data collection/analysis procedures, the concept of rigor in interpretative methodologies, and  integrated research designs.

Scientific Inquiry & the Nature of Science - Barbara Crawford
The ultimate goal of Professor Crawford`s research is to facilitate the majority of students in science classrooms in developing images of science consistent with current practice, and in understanding what science is, what science is not, and the relevancy of science to society. In order to accomplish this goal, she has focused on researching teachers’ knowledge and beliefs of scientific inquiry and the nature of science. Crawford believes that one of the most important issues in science education reform is how to move teachers towards an inquiry orientation. An assumption of her work is that teachers cannot change their current practice of teaching science as a rhetoric of facts to teaching science as inquiry, without having a deep understanding of the nature of scientific inquiry. Another assumption is that teachers need to hold beliefs that teaching science as inquiry is as important as teaching the subject matter of science (for example, the facts and principles of earth and space science, biology, physics, and chemistry). Professor Crawford`s research examines viable ways to support prospective and practicing teachers’ in developing knowledge of scientific inquiry and beliefs that teaching about scientific inquiry is important. An extension of this research connects with the teaching of evolution in public school classrooms. The context for professional development is situating teachers in authentic settings. Authentic settings include both scientific research settings and alternative experiences using learning technologies.

Reading & Literacy Strategies - Travis Park
Professor Park's research interests focus on investigations of the impact of content area reading and literacy strategies on students’ comprehension and motivations to read. Though these investigations, Park also explores the attitudes and practices that agricultural science teachers exhibit in their classrooms, and how these impact their teaching with regard to instructional practices. Currently, he working on a USDA Hatch Grant to determine the impact of content area literacy practices on agricultural science students’ comprehension and motivations to read. This is a three year project that includes working with 10 agricultural science teachers in New York.  Additionally, he has worked with undergraduate and graduate students on other research related to the influence of agricultural science teachers on their students’ college decisions, agricultural literacy, and leadership development through youth organizations. While these are not his primary research foci, they complement one of the underlying theories behind implementation of literacy practices in the classroom—socio-cultural theories of the influence of the teacher.

Critical Examination of Social, Political & Cultural Identities - Scott Peters
Professor Peters' research program is centered on a critical examination of the social, political, and cultural identities, roles, purposes, and work of academic institutions and professionals. He pursues and contextualizes his research in two related lines of inquiry: a historical line that focuses on the origins and early development of the national land-grant system’s agricultural extension work, and a line that utilizes narrative inquiry to analyze and interpret the civic engagement experiences and public purposes and work of contemporary land-grant scholars and extension educators. A key theoretical and practical problem his research seeks to address is that of the dilemma of the relation of expertise and democracy in the academic profession.

Multicultural Philosophies of Relationships in Education - Troy Richardson
A significant part of Professor Richardson's research agenda has to do with the development of multicultural philosophies of relationships in education. As one trained in the discipline of philosophy of education, Richardson takes seriously that tradition of thought that pursuits the question of relationships across cultural, linguistic, and gendered difference through the framework of liberal democratic ideals. At the same time however, he takes the philosophies of relations from these differing groups just as seriously, particularly those of the Indigenous peoples of North America. His research investigates and juxtaposes the conceptual foundations for these “other philosophical traditions” as they align with, challenge, or depart from the normative discussion of “democratic relations” within philosophy of education, (e.g. Vine Deloria Jr. as a Philosopher of Education: An Essay in Remembrance, 2007). Through his continuing investigations of differing philosophical conceptions of hospitality for example, he seeks to formulate a multiculturalist philosophy of relation in education articulated within a reconfigured, Indigenous inflected cosmopolitanism. To this end, he is also engaged with a group of Native and non- Native activists, community members, researchers, and scholars through the Trans- Boundary Indigenous Water Program to advance philosophies of stewardship to the natural world in educational settings.

Relational & Social Aggression Amongst Adolescent Girls - Dawn Schrader
Professor Schrader's research and teaching combine a social contextual constructivist view of knowledge and a social-cognitive psychology of human development within the domains of moral, self and intellectual development. She believes these domains are interconnected, and she has worked on a model that she refers to as the Action-Judgment-Awareness model that explores these components. The model consists of three dynamically related components: Action--the real life choices and experiences of persons; Judgment--the cognitive perspective or framework that people currently have and use, which includes personal epistemology, self and moral perspectives; and Awareness--the metacognitive awareness of thoughts, strategies, experiences and tasks. Professor Schrader's primary research interest is the exploration of the cognitive and metacognitive processes underlying human development and the actions and decisions made in real life settings, including personal, interpersonal and professional decisions in the moral domain. She takes a lifespan developmental approach to understanding social and psychological influences on cognition and action, with the ultimate goal of understanding how individual lives and communities are improved through thoughtful action.

Implementation of Social Policy & Institutional and Organizational Analyses - John Sipple
The focus of Professor Sipple's research focuses on the implementation of social policy, institutional and organizational analyses, and how improved healthcare and pre-K services impact rural children and communities. He has published widely in scholarly journals including the American Educational Research Journal, Education Evaluation and Policy Analysis, Educational Policy, and Educational Administration Quarterly. Recent publications include Killeen, K. M. & Sipple, J. W. (2006). The challenge of regional geography in upstate school reform. The Brookings Institution: Washington, DC. and Sipple, J. W. & Brent, B. (in press). Challenges and Opportunities Associated with Rural School Settings., in Ladd, H. Handbook of Research in Education Finance and Policy.

Teachers Conceptions of Learning & Their Uses of Teaching Approaches - Deborah Trumbull
Deborah Trumbull’s research explores the relations between teachers’ conceptions of learning and their uses of teaching approaches designed to promote student engagement, development, and inquiry, especially for students who have not been academically successful. She has explored this issue in a range of ways, beginning with her longitudinal studies of beginning teachers (e.g. The new science teacher: Cultivating good practice, 1999). Her research work takes her to a range of readings in philosophy and educational theory to understand more deeply how learning has been and can be conceptualized. Currently she is studying her own teaching by following the development of the practical knowledge of preservice science and mathematics teachers with whom she works and analyzing how that development interacts with her teaching practices. In this work she is explicating her ethical commitments and following how the ethical commitments of developing teachers play out in their practices of learning to teach. In collaboration with the Cornell Laboratory of Ornithology, she has studied how experienced teachers make use of curriculum materials designed to foster student inquiry.

Family Education and the Schooling Experiences of Latinos/as in the U.S. - Sofia Villenas
As an anthropologist of education, Professor Villenas explores the intersections of culture, language, race, class and gender with family education and the schooling experiences of Latinos/as in the United States. Specifically, she studies how immigrant families in newly forming Latino communities describe the challenges of raising children in unfamiliar contexts and how they see themselves as teachers and learners within their families and larger community. She focuses on Latina mothers’ complex negotiations of family education as they integrate themselves in their new surroundings, asking how they teach about cultural identity in a local context that may be welcoming or isolating. These questions are important for considering adult and K-12 educational initiatives in rapidly changing communities and within the current national debates on immigration. Her research also leads to new theoretical concerns about how members of non-dominant groups work to survive and construct fulfilling lives. Specifically Professor Villenas is interested in Latinas’ modes of resilience as pedagogy at the intersecting fault lines of immigration, race, class, language and sexuality. She engages in the ongoing process of thinking from and with the knowledge and organic theories produced by Chicanas/Latinas and U.S. Women of Color as a way to perceive the experiences and emancipatory possibilities for People of Color within and outside the public educational system.

Adult Education - Arthur L. Wilson
Professor Wilson's research interests include adult education philosophy and history; program planning practice in adult and extension education; adult learning, especially transformational learning and socio-cultural theories of learning; cultural studies in American adult education and post-colonial studies in international adult education and extension. Overriding research concern in all of these areas is with the politics of education, specifically the role of power in shaping our educational and social lives. Research training and experience in qualitative and historical research methods; special interest in alternative research methods such as discourse analysis, hermeneutics, narrative inquiry, and phenomenology.