Cinthia S Salinas

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

Dr. Salinas is a member of the Social Studies Education program area and is an affiliate faculty member in the Bilingual/Bicultural and the Cultural Studies in Education program areas. Her focus in the social studies includes critical historical inquiry in elementary bilingual and secondary education late arrival immigrant ESL classroom settings, as well as broader understandings of citizenship. Her work also examines social studies teachers' enactment/countering of curriculum through narratives that include civic identities, agency, and membership of others.

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

Blevins,, B., Magill,, K. & Salinas,, C. (2020). Critical historical inquiry: The intersection of ideological clarity and pedagogical content knowledge.. Journal of Social Studies Research,, 44((1),), 35–50.

Magill,, K. & Salinas, C. (2019). The Primacy of Relation: Social Studies Teachers and the Praxis of Critical Pedagogy. Theory and Research in Social Education., 47((1)), 1–28..

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.

DOE Title VI NRC FlAS Fellowship Program Grant
Primary lead COE, Collaborative with LILLAS, 2018-2022. Collaborative curriculum writing project

DOE, EIR Restorative Practices Grant
Primary/lead COE PI, Collaborative with AISD, 2018-2023.

DOE, Gear Up Grant,
Primary/lead COE coordinator, Collaborative with ISPI, 2018-2023.

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.

Division G (Social Context of Education) Mentor Award, 2021, American Education Research Association (AERA) (2021 - 2021)

Honorary Leon Jaworski Award, May 2019, Law Related Education (2019 - 2019)

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.

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. 

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

Sarah De La garza (Committee Member)
English learners, Bilingual and ESL teacher preparation, principal preparation, organizational theory, teacher preparation policy

Melissa R Williams (Supervisor)
Melissa Rojas Williams is a first-generation college student and motherscholar. Melissa currently serves as an assistant instructor for both the Generalist and Bilingual Elementary Social Studies Methods, as well as the Latinx Childrens Literature Course. It is an honor for her to explore how pre-service Bilingual Teachers utilize children’s literature to help build children’s civic identities as they too reflect on their own civic identity, membership, and agency. Having had ten years of teaching experience...

Adeli Ynostroza Ochoa (Committee Member)

Joanna Batt (Committee Member)
I study how students' experiences learning history relates to their identities as people, and how critical, multimodal curriculum can make history teaching and learning more equitable, more connected to students' lives, and more socially just.