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Joel Westheimer

Joel Westheimer

University Research Chair in Democracy

Joel Westheimer is University Research Chair in Democracy and Education at the University of Ottawa.

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Bio

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Joel Westheimer is University Research Chair in Democracy and Education at the University of Ottawa and education columnist for CBC Radio’s Ottawa Morning and Ontario Today shows. He began his education career as a summer camp director and then middle school teacher in the New York City Public School system before obtaining a Ph.D. from Stanford University. His books include the critically acclaimed What Kind of Citizen? Educating Our Children for the Common Good; Pledging Allegiance: The Politics of Patriotism in America’s Schools (foreword by Howard Zinn); and Among Schoolteachers: Community, Autonomy and Ideology in Teachers’ Work. Westheimer lectures widely and has delivered more than 200 keynote speeches. In addition to researching the role of schools in democratic societies, Westheimer also studies, writes, and speaks on global school reform, the standards and accountability onslaught, and the politics of education and education research. He is the author of more than 75 academic and professional journal articles, book chapters, and books and addresses radio and television audiences nationally and internationally. He currently directs (with John Rogers, UCLA) The Inequality Project, investigating what schools in North America are teaching about economic inequality.

Westheimer is recipient of the Canadian Education Association’s Whitworth Award and Knight Fellow for Civic Engagement in Higher Education. He was recently inducted as one of sixty living Laureates of Kappa Delta Pi, the education honor society (established in 1911; past laureates include Margaret Mead, Albert Einstein, and Jean Piaget). He grew up in New York City and has also lived in San Francisco, Princeton, NJ, Buenos Aires, and Israel. Before moving to Ottawa, he taught at Stanford University and at New York University. He enjoys performing in community theatre and plays guitar with a group of professors in a band called The Pedagogues. Westheimer has two children and a dog named Farley. His wife is also a professor – in the English department at Carleton University in Ottawa. In Winter, both he and his wife ice-skate to and from work. Farley stays home

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Topics

Topics

Can Education Transform the World?

What Kind of Citizen? Educating Our Children for the Common Good

Let Teachers Teach: The Power of Education and the Profession of Teaching

Videos

Videos

Joel Westheimer : What Kind of Citizen?
Citizenship Conversation - Joel Westheimer

Books

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