Christopher Brown

Photo of faculty member Christopher P Brown
Professor, Department of Educational Leadership and Policy

Phone: +1 512 232 2288
Email: cpbrown@utexas.edu
Office: SZB 3.318A
View Curriculum Vitae (pdf)
 

Christopher is a Professor in the Department of Educational Leadership and Policy. He also is a Faculty Fellow with The Institute for Urban Policy Research and Analysis. He is also a former preschool, kindergarten, and first grade teacher who worked in Title 1 schools.

Dr. Brown's research interests, which are rooted in qualitative research methodologies, emerged from his experiences as a classroom teacher across a range of early childhood contexts. Such experiences centered him in building a research agenda with varied education stakeholders that seeks to foster, sustain, and extend the complex educational, sociocultural, and individual goals and aspirations of children, their families, teachers, and school leaders. Much of his research centers around examining how teacher education programs can prepare preservice teachers to not only being successful classroom teachers but also advocates for change so that they can engage in instructional practices that best align with the needs and wants of their students and the communities in which they teach.

His other primary line inquiry seeks to understand the impact of policymakers’ reforms on the field of early education. Much of this work seeks to understand how early childhood stakeholders in public school settings make sense of and can respond to policymakers’ reforms that emphasize increased academic achievement, standardization, and accountability while providing limited resources through rigorous and developmentally appropriate learning experiences; such practices seek to support all children so that they can grow as learners and as members of their communities.

Such work has resulted in Dr. Brown receiving funding from the Spencer Foundation multiple times and published over 70 peer-reviewed articles using a range of qualitative research methods, including case study, video-cued multi-vocal ethnographic, and qualitative metasynthesis methods, to examine a range of issues centering on policy, early childhood education, teaching, and teacher education. These publications have appeared in such journals as: Qualitative Inquiry, Teaching and Teacher Education, Journal of Teacher Education, Teachers College Record, American Educational Research Journal, The Elementary School Journal, Journal of Early Childhood Teacher Education, Action in Teacher Education, Journal of School Leadership, and The Teacher Educator. Among these pieces, he is first author on 68 of them, and 45 were written with 17 former and current graduate students. He has also edited two research-oriented books, written one practitioner-oriented textbook with two former graduate students, a parent-oriented book on the issue of kindergarten readiness, and recently published a book about the changed kindergarten with Teachers College Press. Lastly, he has written numerous book chapters and research-based commentaries.

As an instructor at UT, he is a highly rated professor who has been awarded the University of Texas System Board of Regents’ Outstanding Teaching Award and the National Association of Early Childhood Teacher Educators Outstanding Early Childhood Teacher Educator Award.

In terms of service, he currently serve as the co-editor for the ECE Series at Teacher College Press. He is also on the editorial board for the Journal of Early Childhood Teacher Education, the Journal of Research in Childhood Education, and the International Advisory Board for the Journal of Early Childhood Research. He has also served as the Past-Chair, Chair, and Chair Elect of the Early Education and Child Development Special Interest Group of AERA. Furthermore, at UT, he currently serves as the M.Ed. Program Coordinator for the Educational Policy and Program Area and Assistant Graduate Advisor for the ELP department.