Assistant Professor

2105C Benjamin Building
University of Maryland
College Park, MD 20742
(301) 405-2220
spreen@umd.edu

Ph.D., Teachers College, Columbia University
Joined faculty in 2002

Dr. Spreen’s teaching and academic experience is in the field of comparative education and international education policy, with an emphasis on international studies of school reform, curriculum planning and instructional leadership. Dr. Spreen’s research centers on socio-cultural studies of education reform, curriculum change and school leadership; critical ethnographies of school communities; and international examinations of multicultural/intergroup practices in classrooms. In 1998 Dr. Spreen was a Visiting Scholar at the University of Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, South Africa. Her research and teaching in South Africa focused on curriculum policy development and international aid influences. Her professional work has focused on designing and implementing systemic school reform initiatives and school improvement programs throughout the US and abroad. She is Founding Editor of Current Issues in Comparative Education www.tc.columbia.edu/cice . Her regional areas of work have included (but are not limited to): Africa, Latin America, and the United States.

Area/disciplinary specializations include: comparative sociological foundations of education and cultural anthropology with an emphasis on qualitative research -- primarily case methods and ethnographic studies of school-communities.

Research interests: Equity, diversity, social justice in curriculum and instructional planning; Globalization and educational policy reform/policy borrowing; Teachers as agents of change/curriculum-oriented instructional leadership; Comprehensive school restructuring for diversity and excellence; Comparative multiculturalism/anti-racist practices and pedagogies; International comparisons of race, ethnicity and identity in schooling.

Teaching interests: Comparative and International Education; Cultural Anthropology and Education; Cultural & Social Bases of Education Cross-cultural studies of learning; Schooling identities and social justice; School restructuring for equity and diversity; Leadership for Global Change; International Perspectives on School Reform; Educational Reform in Transitional Societies; Globalization and Education; Curriculum change and pedagogical processes; Comparative multicultural education.

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• Spreen, C. A. (Forthcoming) Appropriating Borrowed Policies: Outcomes-Based Education in South Africa. In G. Steiner-Khamsi (Ed.), The Global Politics of Education Borrowing and Lending. New York, Teachers College Press.



• Spreen, C. A. (2004) The Vanishing Origins of OBE: Agency and Resistance to Educational Transfer in South Africa. In D. Phillips & K. Oches (Eds.), Historical Perspectives on Policy Borrowing and Lending. Oxford Issues in Comparative Education, Oxford University Press.
  
• Spreen, C. A. (2002) New Technologies and Language Learning: Cases of the Less Commonly Taught Languages. National Foreign Language Resource Center, University of Hawaii, University of Hawaii Press.
  
• Spreen, C. A. (2001) Globalization and Educational Policy Borrowing: Mapping Outcomes- Based Education in South Africa. (Ph.D. Dissertation in Comparative and International Education. New York: Columbia University, Graduate School of Arts and Sciences).



• Spreen, C. A. (2001). Book Review: Western Education and Political Domination in Africa: A Study in Critical Dialogical Pedagogy by Magnus O. Bassey, Bergen & Garvey (Pub.) Comparative Education Review, 45(1), UofC Press.



• Beck, C., Spreen, C. A. & Vally, S. (2000). Do Trade Unions Matter? Education Policy Approaches Towards Consolidation: Conflicting Interests between Market and Equity in South Africa. Education and Society, Sydney, Australia).



• Spreen, C. A. (1999). Enablement and Empowerment: Defining the community in school decentralization in the US. In Radtke & Weiss (eds.) Schulautonomie, Wohlfahrtsstaat und Chancengleichheit. Frankfurt, Germany.



• Vally, S. & Spreen, C. A. (1998). Education Policy and Implementation Developments. Quarterly Review of Education and Training in South Africa. February - May.



• Marneweck, L. & Spreen, C. A. (1998). Dancing with the Monster: Mastering the Steps of OBE in the Northern Province. A Report for the Sacred Heart Research and Development Group, Sacred Heart College, Johannesburg, South Africa.



• Spreen, C. A. (1997). Tying Together Theory and Practice: Action Research in Interdisciplinary Programs at Three High Schools New York: National Center for Restructuring Education, Schools and Teaching.
  

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• EDPL 605 Comparative Education
• EDPL 647 Context for Teaching and Learning
• EDPL 746 Restructuring Schools
• EDPL 788B Issues and Institutions in International Educational Development

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