Thomas Levine

Associate Professor

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Titles:

Associate Professor

Academic Degrees:

Ph.D. (Curriculum and Teacher Education) Stanford University, 2005
Certificate of Advanced Graduate Studies (Chinese Language and Culture) Clark University, 2001
M.A.T. (Social Studies Education), Tufts University, 1989
B.A. with honors (History), Brown University

Areas of Expertise:

Teacher Education

Professional Development

Social Studies Education

Sociocultural theory

Teacher Preparation for work with Emergent Bilinguals

Biography:

Tom Levine is an Assistant Professor in the Curriculum & Instruction Department of the Neag School of Education.

His research explores how collaboration among professionals creates opportunities for learning and improvement of professional practice. He has used sociocultural theoretical frameworks to study the professional community among in-service teachers in two high schools and among clinical supervisors in a teacher education program. Working with Sandra Sirota, he is currently building an intergenerational learning community of K-12 teachers and high school youth promoting youth civic activism as co-PI of “Human Rights Close to Home.”  He built a learning community among 34 in-service elementary teachers improving their social studies instruction as Co-PI for a Connecticut Teacher Quality Partnership Grant, “Making History: Implementing Connecticut’s New Social Studies Frameworks.”  Two other grants helped him nurture and study a faculty learning community among 18 teacher educators to improve preservice teachers’ capacity to teach English language learners; Routledge published a book exploring the process and impact of this collective work on faculty’s teaching and preservice teachers’ practices. He co-led his teacher education program’s articulation of program-wide core practices; with colleagues, he studied the impact of this collective work on teacher educators’ practices.

Tom served for six years as an Associate Editor (2018-2020) and then Executive Editor (2020-2024) of Teaching and Teacher Education and remains an Executive Board member for Educational Research Review. 

From 1998-2000, Tom was the Associate Director of the New England China Network at Primary Source; he designed and led workshops on China for elementary and secondary teachers on groups, led teacher study tours to China, and supported teachers in designing lessons on peoples traditionally excluded from social studies curricula. Tom spent 2000-2005 at Stanford, where he earned a Ph.D. in Teacher Education and won a Stanford Graduate Fellowship and a Spencer Foundation Dissertation Fellowship. He taught high school social studies from 1987 to 1995. Tom’s wife is Korean; Tom and Jihee have raised their twin daughters to be bilingual.

Selected Publications:

Levine, T.H., & Marcus, A.S. (2024). Is the United States Exceptional? Inviting Students to Consider American Democracy, Liberty, Opportunity, and Optimism During Troubled Times.  The Social Studies. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00377996.2024.2364666

Levine, T.H., Mitoma, G., Anagnostopolous, D.O., & Roselle, R.S. (2023). Exploring the Nature, Facilitators, and Challenges of Program Coherence in a Case of Teacher Education Program Redesign Using Core Practices. Journal of Teacher Education (74)1, 69-84. https://doi.org/10.1177/002248712211086

Levine, T. H. (2022). Consensus Circle Presidential Rating: Shifting Traditional Social Studies Instruction While Preparing Students for Democracy. The Social Studies, 113(6), 319–329. https://doi.org/10.1080/00377996.2022.2062273

Levine, T.H., Howard, E.R., & Moss, D.M. (2014). Preparing Teachers for Second Language Learners: Lessons from a Faculty Learning Community. New York: Routledge (edited volume for the Research on Teacher Education Series).

Marcus, A.S., & Levine, T.H. , & Grenier, R.S. (2012). How Secondary History Teachers Use and Think About Museums: Current Practices and Untapped Promise for Promoting Historical Understanding. Theory and Research in Social Education, 40(1), 66-97.

Levine, T.H. (2011). Features and strategies of supervisor professional community as a means of improving the supervision of preservice teachers. Teaching and Teacher Education, 27(5), 930-941.

Levine, T.H. (2011). Comparing Pathways for Converting Large High Schools into Smaller Units: Interdependent Smaller Learning Communities as a Defensible Alternative. Improving Schools, 14(2) 172-186.

Levine, T.H. (2011). Experienced teachers and school reform: Exploring how two different professional communities facilitated and complicated change. Improving Schools, 14(1), 30-47.

Levine, T.H. & Marcus, A.S. (2010). How the structure and focus of teachers’ collaborative activities facilitate and constrain teacher learning. Teaching and Teacher Education, 26(3) 389-398.

Levine, T. H. (2010). Tools for the study and design of collaborative teacher learning: The affordances of different conceptions of teacher community and activity theory. Teacher Education Quarterly, 37(1), 109-130.

Levine, T. H. (2010). What Research Tells Us About the Impact and Challenges of Smaller Learning Communities. Peabody Journal of Education, 85(3), 276-289.

Levine, T.H. (2010). “‘A small group of thoughtful, committed citizens”: How social studies can enable resistance rather than social reproduction. In D. Moss & T. Osborn (Eds.) Critical Essays on Resistance in Education: Volume 46, Counterpoints: Studies in the Postmodern Theory of Education. New York: Peter Lang, 143-158.

Levine, T.H. (2010). Socializing future social studies teachers and K-12 students. The Social Studies, 101(2), 69-74.

 

Associations/Committees/Outreach:

Executive Editor, Teaching and Teacher Education

EdPrepLab Working Group on Racial Justice as Foundational in Teacher Education

National Council of the Social Studies

National Network of Educational Renewal

American Association of Colleges of Teacher Education