Cinthia S Salinas

Ph.D. in Curriculum and Instruction, The University of Texas at Austin, 1999

Research focuses on bilingual and ESL education, high-stakes social studies testing, and activism in education.

Member, Editorial Board, Multicultural Perspectives(2013 - Present)

Member, Editorial Board, Theory and Research in Social Education(2013 - Present)

Chair, College and University Faculty Assembly(2008 - 2009)

Member, Editorial Board, Theory and Research in Social Education(2007 - 2010)

Member, American Educational Research Association

Member, National Council for Social Studies

Salinas,, C.., Vickery,, A.. & Fránquiz, M., M.. (2016). Advancing border pedagogies: Understandings of citizenship through comparisons of home to school contexts,. High School Journal, 99(4), 322–236.

Salinas,, C.., Fránquiz,, M>. & Rodriguez Naseem,, N.. (2016). Writing Latina/o historical narratives: Narratives at the intersection of critical historical inquiry and LatCrit. Urban Review, 48(2), 264–281.

Salinas, C.., Naseem Rodriguez, N.. & Ayala Lewis, B.. (2015). The Tejano History Curriculum Project: Creating a Space for Authoring Tejanas/os into the Social Studies Curriculum. Bilingual Research Journal, 38(2), 172–189.

Salinas, C. & Blevins, B.. (2014). Critical historical inquiry: How might pre-service teachers confront master historical narratives. Social Studies Research and Practice, 9(3), 35–50.

Franquiz, M. & Salinas, C. (2013). Knowing English Is Not Enough! Cultivating Academic Literacies Among High School Newcomers.. High School Journal, 96(4), 339–357.

Blankenship, W. & Salinas, C. (2013). Shifting Neo-Narratives: Online Participatory Media & Historical Narrative.. Journal of the Research Center for Educational Technology, 9(1), 74–93.

Saye, J. & Social Studies Inquiry Research Collabor, (SSIRC). (2013). Authentic Pedagogy: Its Presence in Social Studies Classrooms and Relationship to Student Performance on State- Mandated Tests. Theory & Research in Social Education, 41, 89–132.

DeWitt, S. & Social Studies Inquiry Research Collabor, (SSIRC). (2013). The Lower-Order Expectations of High-Stakes Tests: A Four-State Analysis of Social Studies Standards and Test Alignment.. Theory & Research in Social Education,, 41(3), 382–427.

Salinas, C. & Blevins, B. (2012). Enacting critical historical thinking: Decision making among preservice social studies teachers.. Teacher Education Quarterly, 40, 7–24.

Salinas, C., Blevins, B. & Sullivan, C. (2012). Critical Historical Thinking: When Official Narratives Collide with Other Narratives.. Multicultural Perspectives, 14, 18–27.

Franquiz, M. & Salinas, C. (2011). Newcomers to the US: Developing historical thinking among Latino immigrant students in a Central Texas high school.. Bilingual Research Journal, 34, 58–75.

Salinas, C. & Castro, T. (2010). Disrupting the official curriculum: Cultural biography and the decision making of Latino preservice teachers.. Theory and Research in Social Education, 38(3), 428–463.

Salinas, C., Sullivan, C. & Wacker, T. (2007). Curriculum considerations for late-arrival high school immigrant students: Developing a critically conscious World Geography Studies approach to citizenship education.. Journal of Border Educational Research, 6(2), 55–67.

Salinas, C. & Sullivan, C. (2007). Latina/o teachers and historical positionality: Challenging the construction of the official school knowledge. Journal of Curriculum and Pedagogy, 4, 178–199.

Salinas, C. & Reidel, M. (2007). The cultural politics of the Texas’ educational agenda: Examining who gets what, when and how.. Anthropology and Education Quarterly, 38, 42–56.

Tejano Monument Curriculum Project
Funded by the Tejano Monument Board and the Walmart Foundation, the collaborative project merged the efforts of the teacher education bilingual program with the MA/MEd Proyecto Maestría in creating curriculum that enriches elementary students' understanding of the history of Tejas.

Social Studies Inquiry Research Collaborative (SSIRC)
A group of studies being conducted across the country to examine what sorts of classroom experiences improve student learning and performance in social studies. This collaborative includes social studies educators from the College and University Faculty Assembly of the National Council for the Social Studies and includes the Social Studies program area in Curriculum and Instruction at the University. In the spring 2009 thirty university researchers across the country will each select one local school system as a partner in examining how different kinds of instruction may affect the social studies learning of diverse student populations.

Presidential Timeline
Funded by NEH Digital Humanities grant and the National Archives and Records Administration the project (2007-2013) entails a collaborative between all the Presidential Libraries and the College of Education. Included in the development and coordination of online primary source materials are multiple teacher workshops that address the expanded use of historical thinking.

Warren Fellowship for Future Teachers Faculty Fellow, Houston Holocaust Museum, (2018)

Texas A&I Distinguished Alumni, Texas A&I Alumni Organization (2017)

Ruben E. Hinojosa Regents Professorship in Education, University of Texas at Austin (2016)

Elizabeth Shatto Massey Award for Excellence in Teacher Education, University of Texas at Austin (2015)

Innovations in Research on Diversity in Teacher Education Award, American Educational Research Association, Division K: Teaching and Teacher Education (2013)

Regents' Outstanding Teacher Award, The University of Texas System (2012)

Best Paper Award, American Educational Research Association, Social Studies Special Interest Group (2012)

Heath T Robinson, Ph.D., expected 2022 (Co-supervisor)
Heath's research interests live at the intersection of curriculum studies, social studies teacher education, and the politics of education. Drawing on sociocultural and critical theoretical frameworks, his research is primarily concerned with preparing secondary social studies preservice teachers to enact humanizing pedagogies in public school classrooms.

Da Hei Ku, Ph.D., expected 2021 (Co-supervisor)
social context of education, early childcare centers and early childhood education, educational policy, policy implications on early childhood education

Kate Puckett, Ph.D., expected 2021 (Co-supervisor)
QRIS systems and their influence on quality as perceived by teachers; Play as an evidenced based curriculum; Early childhood teacher education; Mentoring of inservice teachers in childcare settings; Influences on adults' decisions about how much risky play to allow children to participate in, particularly in cross-cultural settings

Justin H Krueger (Committee Member)
As a doctoral student in the Curriculum and Instruction - Social Studies Education program his research interests include informal learning spaces, public pedagogy, maps, historical memory, rural education, outdoor education, and museum education.

Mitchell D Ingram (Supervisor)
Mitch's research interests include the role of humor as a site for the mobilization of community cultural wealth, relajo in bilingual contexts and he is passionate about the different linguistic varieties, dichos, refranes, modismos, and chistes of the Spanish-speaking world. In addition, he is fascinated by how minoritized mono/bilingual Spanish-speakers leverage humor in both affiliative and disaffiliative ways to navigate the US education system and what this could mean for theory, pedagogy, and practice.

Nathaly S Batista-Morales (Co-supervisor)
Nathaly's research focuses on the preparation of Latinx teachers across contexts for decolonial methodologies and critical literacies. In her dissertation, she studied how pre-service teachers in Puerto Rico and Texas engaged and with decolonial methods and critical literacies through Zoom mediated collaborations. In her past work, she has collaborated with faculty and colleagues across program areas to study the preparation of teachers for critical literacy and the critical role of cooperating teachers in this process.

Desiree Pallais-Downing (Supervisor)
Examines the contributions of strengths-based approaches in literacy instruction with Spanish-speaking bilingual teacher candidates and in-service teachers in the U.S. and in Latin America.