Manya Whitaker
Executive Vice President & Chief of Staff
Education, President's Office
Dr. Manya Whitaker is an Associate Professor of Education at Colorado College. She is a developmental educational psychologist with expertise in social and political issues in education. Her courses include Urban Education, Diversity & Equity in Education, and Educational Psychology, among others. She researches the stability of teachers' diversity-related belief systems across time and settings, and how those beliefs can be intentionally disrupted and re-structured through teacher training. She is the author of Schooling Multicultural Teachers: A Guide for Program Assessment and Professional Development, Learning from the Inside-Out: Child Development and School Choice and co-editor of Counternarratives from Women of Color Academics.
Professional Experience
Executive Vice President and Chief of Staff, Colorado College (January 2022-present)
Advisory Board for the Matrix Center for the Advancement of Social Equity and Inclusion, University of Colorado, Colorado Springs (October 2014-present)
David and Lucile Packard Professor, Colorado College, Colorado Springs, CO (July 2020-present)
Associate Professor of Education, Colorado College, Colorado Springs, CO (February 2019-present)
Director of the Crown Faculty Center, Colorado College, Colorado Springs, CO (July 2021-January 2022)
Director of Graduate Studies & Chair of Education, Colorado College, Colorado Springs, CO (January 2020-January 2022)
Interim Director of the Butler Center, Colorado College, Colorado Springs, CO (February 2020-July 2020)
Associate Chair of Education, Colorado College, Colorado Springs, CO (August 2017-December 2019)
Assistant Professor of Education, Colorado College, Colorado Springs, CO (May 2013-February 2019)
Postdoctoral Fellow, Riley Scholar-in-Residence, Education, Colorado College, Colorado Springs, CO (August 2011-May 2013)
Research & Teaching Interests
Teacher Identity Development; Urban Education; Family Engagement; Social Justice Pedagogy; Culturally Responsive Pedagogy
Publications
Books & Articles (published/in press/accepted)
Whitaker, M.C. (2022). Public School Equity: Educational Leadership for Justice. W.W. Norton & Company, Inc.
Whitaker, M.C. (2021). When the teacher is the token: Moving from antiblackness to antiracism. Northwest Journal of Teacher Education, 16(2). DOI: 10.15760/nwjte.2021.16.2.10
Valtierra, K. M. & Whitaker, M.C. (2021). Beliefs or Classroom Context: What Matters Most to Novice Urban Teachers’ Enactment of Culturally Responsive Pedagogy? The Urban Review, 53(5), 857-880. DOI: 10.1007/s11256-021-00599-x
Caldera, A., Whitaker, M.C., & Popova, D. (2020). Classroom Management in Urban Schools: Proposing a Course Framework. Teaching Education, 31(3), 343-361DOI: 10.1080/10476210.2018.1561663
Whitaker, M.C., & Valtierra, K.M. (2019). Schooling Multicultural Teachers: A Guide for Professional Development and Program Assessment. Emerald Publishing.
Whitaker, M.C. (2019). Us and Them: Using Social Identity Theory to Explain Teacher-Student Relationships in Urban Schools. The Urban Review, 52, 691-707 DOI: 10.1007/s11256-019-00539-w
Whitaker, M.C., & Grollman, E.A. (Eds.) (2018). Counternarratives from Women of Color Academics: Bravery, Vulnerability and Resistance. New York, NY: Routledge/Taylor Francis.
Whitaker, M.C., & Valtierra, K.M. (2018). Enhancing Preservice Teachers’ Motivation to Teach Diverse Learners. Teaching and Teacher Education, 73, 171-182.
Whitaker, M.C., & Valtierra, K.M. (2018). The Development of the Dispositions for Culturally Responsive Pedagogy Scale. Journal for Multicultural Education, 12(1), 10-24.
Whitaker, M.C. (2016). Learning from the inside-out: Child development and school choice. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers.
Whitaker, M.C. (2016). (Re)Defining academic rigor: From theory to praxis in college classrooms. Currents in Teaching and Learning, 8(1), 4-17.
Whitaker, M.C. & Holum, B. (2015). A Community-based learning approach for changing students’ beliefs about poverty. Understanding and Dismantling Privilege, 5(2), 57-81.
Whitaker, M.C., & Hoover-Dempsey, K.V. (2013). School influences on parents’ role beliefs. The Elementary School Journal, 114(1), 73-99.
Selected Book Chapters (published/in press/accepted)
Whitaker, M.C. & Fhagen, P. (in press). Anti-oppressive pedagogy: Connecting theory to practice within faculty learning communities. In Rainville, Title, & Desrochers (Eds.), Faculty Learning Communities Working Towards a More Equitable, Just, and Anti-Racist Future in Higher Education. Information Age Publishers.
Valtierra, K.M. & Whitaker, M.C. (in press). The inclusive instructional observation protocol: A framework for faculty instructional coaching. In Rainville, Title, & Desrochers (Eds.), Faculty Learning Communities Working Towards a More Equitable, Just, and Anti-Racist Future in Higher Education. Information Age Publishers.
Whitaker, M.C. (2023). It’s complicated: White teachers’ motivation to teach in urban schools. In T. Flowers (Ed.), The Foundations of Urban Education: Key Issues. London, UK: Cambridge Scholars Publishing.
Whitaker, M.C. (2020). Utilizing feminist pedagogy to foster preservice teachers’ cultural consciousness. In C. Clausen and S. Logan (Eds.), Integrating social justice education in teacher preparation programs (pp. 76-100). Hershey, PA: IGI Global
Whitaker, M.C. (2019). The Hoover-Dempsey and Sandler model of the parent involvement process. In S. Sheldon and T. Turner-Vorbeck (Eds.), The Wiley handbook of family, school, and community relationships in education (pp. 421-433). Hoboken, NJ: Wiley Press.
Whitaker, M.C. (2018). Urban charter schools. In W. Pink (Ed.), Oxford research encyclopedia of education. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.
Whitaker, M.C., & Hines-Datiri, D. (2018). Teaching what we don’t know: Community-based learning as a tool for critical race praxis. In T. Meidl and M.M. Sulentic Dowell (Eds.), Service-learning initiatives in teacher education programs (pp. 315-332). Hershey, PA: IGI Global.
Books and Articles (under contract/under review/in progress)
Whitaker, M.C. (in progress). Knowing What They Need: Examining the Contextual Factors that Shape Novice White Teachers’ Experiences in Racially Diverse Urban Schools
Whitaker, M.C. (in progress). Supporting the Development of White Urban Teachers’ Positive Role Constructions for Teaching Minoritized Students
Selected Conference Presentations
Whitaker, M.C. (2022, November). Supporting the Development of White Urban Teachers’ Positive Role Constructions for Teaching Minoritized Students. Paper presented at the annual meeting of the International Conference on Urban Education. Cancun, Mexico.
Whitaker, M.C. (2022, November). Examining the Contextual Factors that Shape Novice White Teachers’ Experiences in Racially Diverse Urban Schools. Paper presented at the annual meeting of the International Conference on Urban Education. Cancun, Mexico.
Whitaker, M.C. (2018, November). Great White Hoax: The Myth of High Quality Urban Charter Schools. Paper presented at the annual meeting of the International Conference on Urban Education. Nassau, Bahamas.
Whitaker, M.C. (2018, April). Using What We Know to Get What We Need: Developing School-Community Partnerships. Paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Educational Research Association. New York, NY.
Whitaker, M.C. (2017, April). The Development and Validation of the Dispositions for Culturally Responsive Pedagogy Scale. Paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Educational Research Association. San Antonio, TX.
Service to the Profession
Editorial Board, Association of Independent Liberal Arts Colleges for Teacher Education (2021-present)
Educational Equity Development Advisory Board, National Geographic Society (2020-present)
Vice President, African American Youth Leadership Conference (2019-present)
Journal reviewer for multiple journals (2012-present)
Grants & Fellowships
Creating Student Internship Pipelines for City Economic Development ($1,000,000), Co-Principal Investigator, Colorado Office of Economic Development and International Trade (OEDIT) (2023-in progress)
From Preservice to Novice Teaching: Cognitive and Contextual Influences on Early Career Teachers' Culturally Responsive Instructional Practices ($294,456), Principal Investigator, Spencer Foundation (2021-finalist)
Robert Noyce Scholarship Program ($1,190,000), Co-Principal Investigator, National Science Foundation (2015-2021)
Rural Educator Recruitment/Retention ($42,000), Co-Principal Investigator, Colorado Department of Education and Colorado Center for Rural Education (2017-2018)
Edmondson Grant ($16,000), Edmondson Foundation (2013-2014)
Jackson Fellowship ($8,000), Colorado College (2013-2014)
Innovation in Teaching Grant ($500), Colorado College (2013)
Regular Classes
CC120: First-Year Writing Seminar: Learning Across Communities
ED155: Teaching and Learning Across Communities
ED222: Diversity and Equity in Education
ED255: Urban Education
ED311: Educational Psychology
ED386: Education Assessment in a Political Context
ED455: Education Reform
ED572: Teacher and Teaching Identities (graduate course)
Education
Ph.D., Vanderbilt University, Psychology: Developmental Psychology, Urban Education
M.S., Vanderbilt University, Psychology: Developmental Psychology
B.A., Dartmouth College, Psychology with Honors
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