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Join us for a Curriculum Conversation with Amanda Morales, Associate Professor of Education at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.

Please note this event has been rescheduled from its original date of April 1st. This event will now take place on May 6th, 2026, from 12pm-1pm.

Description

This session invites educators and scholars at all levels to reimagine curriculum development through a pedagogical lens that centers community as both context and content. Grounded in culturally sustaining and critical traditions, and informed by participatory action research, Morales shares from her long-time, state-wide, cross-institutional partnership work that positions BIPoC and ally educators and students (from middle-school through graduate education) as co-constructors of knowledge who are invested in collaboratively investigating, reimagining, and transforming their educational realities. Participants will explore how cultural solidarity, practices of care, and collective healing can serve as powerful curricular foundations—particularly for students historically marginalized by schooling. Rather than viewing curriculum within and across education as static or neutral, this session frames it as a dynamic, relational process rooted in the lived experiences, knowledge systems, and critical resilience (Morales et al., 2025) of communities. Attendees will engage with frameworks and examples that break down silos, challenge dominant paradigms, and offer possibilities for designing learning spaces that are humanizing, justice-oriented, and responsive to the cultural wealth students and educators bring into classroom spaces.

About the Speaker

Amanda R. Morales, Ph.D., is an associate professor of education at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. She came to higher education from informal and community-based science education and has worked in teacher preparation for over 20 years. Her research addresses issues of equity and access for minoritized students from preschool to graduate school. More specifically, her current work focuses on teacher diversification pathways, school & university partnerships, teacher preparation for working with (im)migrant, multilingual, and minoritized students, Youth Participatory Action Research (YPAR), and critical mentoring for teachers of Color. She has won national recognitions and research awards from the American Association of Colleges of Teacher Education, the American Education Research Association, and the American Association of Hispanics in Higher Education Association.Amanda is the author of over 30 peer-reviewed publications and has written for, led, and collaborated on numerous successful federal, state, and regional grant projects (totaling over $8.5 million dollars).Amanda teaches both graduate and undergraduate courses on multicultural education, intercultural communication, and critical & anti-colonial theories in education.