Janet Bixby

Janet Bixby is Associate Dean and Associate Professor of Education at the Lewis & Clark Graduate School of Education and Counseling, where she has been on the faculty since 2001. Janet began her teaching career as a Social Studies teacher at Brainerd High School in Minnesota (where the film Fargo was really filmed), and also taught high school in Cambridge, Massachusetts. After getting her Master’s degree at the Harvard Graduate School of Education and her PhD at the University of Wisconsin at Madison, she joined the faculty at Lewis & Clark. At Lewis & Clark she has been teaching courses on curriculum and pedagogy in secondary social studies as well as professional seminars on secondary teaching.

Areas of Expertise

Civic engagement of youth, teaching history, teaching social studies, equitable practices

Current Research

Most recently she has been serving as the Co-Director of a federally funded Teaching American History (TAH) grant project aimed at improving the quality of history teaching in K-12 schools in Central Oregon.  She has run workshops for teachers over the summer at OHSU in a National Institutes of Health funded project aimed at improving the teaching of science in the middle school grades. Her work focused on teaching controversial issues.  Before that she conducted research on alumni of a youth civic education nonprofit called Mikva Challenge, based in Chicago and edited a book on youth civic education.

Publications

Educating Democratic Citizens in Troubled Times

• Bixby, J.S. (2008). To Think, Live, and Breathe Politics: Experiencing Democratic Citizenship in Chicago. In J.S. Bixby & Pace, J.L. Educating Citizens in Troubled Times: Qualitative Studies of Current Efforts. Albany, N.Y.: SUNY Press.
• Pace, J.L. and Bixby, J.S. (2008). Introduction: Studying Citizenship Education in Troubled Times. In J.S. Bixby & Pace, J.L. Educating Citizens in Troubled Times: Qualitative Studies of Current Efforts. Albany, N.Y.: SUNY Press.
• Bixby, J.S. and J.L. Pace (Ed.s) (2008). Educating Citizens in Troubled Times: Qualitative Studies of Current Efforts. Albany, N.Y.: SUNY Press. Co-editor of a volume of qualitative studies.
• Oregon Public Broadcasting (2007). American History in the Making. Co-authored segments of this multi-media professional development program for secondary teachers on American History.
• Bixby, J. (2006). Authority in Detracked High School Classrooms: Tensions Among Individualism, Equity, and Legitimacy. In J. Pace and A. Hemmings (Ed.s) Classroom Authority: Theory, Research, and Practice. Mahwah, N. J.: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
• Bixby, J. and C. Unger. (2003). Learning Center: Introduction to the OHS Learning Center. Introductory webpage to the Oregon Historical Society Museum’s website’s Learning Center designed to help secondary social studies teachers access and use the Society’s significant on-line document collection. http://www.ohs.org/ education/oregonhistory/ learning_center/ dspPrint.cfm?resource_ID=00046EE1-C93D-1E3E- 9CB580B05272FE9F (June 12, 2006).

Academic Credentials

• PhD University of Wisconsin at Madison
• MEd Harvard University
• AB Harvard and Radcliffe Colleges