Teaching and Practice in "Crowded Classrooms"
This research group brings together a dynamic cohort of 6-8 educators engaged in teacher research under the mentorship of Professor Ziva Hassenfeld. In 2024 Professor Hassenfeld published her first book, The Second Conversation: Interpretive Authority in the Bible Classroom, a powerful proposal for how best to induct students into rich reading practices that was all rooted in her own teacher research. As a postdoctoral fellow, Hassenfeld received a grant to return to the 7th-grade biblical literacy classroom to teach and study her teaching. Hassenfeld firmly believes that teacher research must be centered in the field of education scholarship. This research group is a direct expression of this conviction.
Participants in this research group, all conducting teacher research under the direction of Professor Hassenfeld and/or her colleague Professor Rachel Kramer Theodorou, span a wide range of teaching and professional experience, from undergraduate students completing their practicum at Brandeis, to novice teachers (and Brandeis graduates), to postdoctoral fellows, to seasoned professionals transitioning into education from fields like journalism. Despite their varied backgrounds, these educators share a commitment to inquiry-driven, student-centered pedagogy and a common methodological approach: conducting research rooted in their own teaching practice.
The group will meet monthly to share, discuss, and workshop each member’s evolving research. Projects explore diverse yet overlapping themes, including language and multilingualism, reading and writing instruction, race, religion, gender, and cross-national teaching contexts. The goal of the group is twofold: to support each participant in completing a research project, ranging from undergraduate theses to full-length articles, and to foster a community of reflective practitioners. By the end of the year, participants will not only have deepened their understanding of their own practice but also contributed to a broader conversation about teaching and learning, with the aspirational aim of submitting their work for publication, perhaps as part of a special journal issue.
Aileen Cahill ‘23 is an English Learner (EL) teacher at a public high school outside Boston and a graduate of Brandeis University. She has worked as a substitute teacher, a co-teacher for elementary EL in a dual-language school in Madrid, and now teaches high school EL while pursuing her M.Ed. in TESOL at Framingham State University. As an undergraduate, she was a research assistant on education history projects and began working with Ziva Hassenfeld on studies of classroom literature, language teaching, and pedagogy. Her current classroom-based research examines how religion shapes EL students’ experiences in public schools, combining teacher journaling and curriculum analysis, and eventually classroom observations and formal recordings. She is committed to addressing the lack of teacher preparation around religious diversity and contention in culturally responsive education. She aims to help educators better meet the needs of immigrant students by integrating awareness of religion into inclusive teaching practices.
Dr. Michal Shapira-Junger is a Jewish education researcher specializing in teachers' professional identity and pedagogical practices across diverse contexts. Her research focuses on teachers' personal and professional identity and teaching practices at multicultural intersections, such as teaching emissaries in the Jewish diaspora and bi-national schools in Israel. Currently, she is conducting postdoctoral research at Brandeis University under the supervision of Professor Hassenfeld, focusing on teaching Biblical Hebrew as a second language. Alongside her Hebrew teaching research, Dr. Shapira-Junger continues her studies on educational emissaries.
