Cinthia S Salinas

Ph.D., The University of Texas at Austin

Dr. Salinas examines the experiences of Latina/o teachers and their students in elementary and secondary social studies classrooms. Her focus on critical historical inquiry and critical geography considers how the civic identities, agency and membership of Latinas/os are included in the teaching of the social studies. Dr. Salinas attention upon elementary bilingual students and their teachers as well as secondary late arrival immigrant students and their teachers emphasizes the importance of historical positionality, historical funds of knowledge and cultural citizenship.

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.

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)

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

Anna Falkner, Ph.D., expected 2020 (Committee Member)

Mitchell D Ingram, Ph.D., expected 2019 (Supervisor)
Mitch's research interests include the role of humor as part 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 hegemonic systems and what this could mean for theory, pedagogy, and practice.

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.

Nathaly S Batista-Morales (Co-supervisor)
My research interests meet at the intersection of biliteracy development and activism/advocacy or what some have termed Critical Literacy in bilingual, elementary classrooms. I am interested in how Latinx teachers engage in this process and how they draw on their identities and past experiences. I believe in the agency of Latinx children, their families and their teachers to enact social change and counteract the stories others tell about them.

Joanna Englehardt (Committee Member)
Joanna Englehardt is a doctoral candidate and assistant instructor of Curriculum and Instruction in Early Childhood Education at The University of Texas at Austin. As a former preschool director her professional and research interests center on promoting teacher retention through the use of ongoing center-based inquiry professional development that provides teachers agency in their learning and critical reflection of their teaching practices.

Desiree Pallais-Downing (Supervisor)
Desirée Pallais is a PhD candidate in the Bilingual/Bicultural program at the University of Texas at Austin. She is very interested in critically examining how assumptions derived from established ideologies and policy initiatives, guide educators in different contexts. She investigates cross-language and cross-cultural aspects of teaching and learning with Spanish-speaking populations, especially in the area of literacy. Her current work is focused on using discourse analytic techniques to identify the linguistic and pedagogical contributions, and...

Enrique D Degollado (Committee Member)