Faculty Profiles: Reba Page
Professor Reba Page
Bachelor’s Degree, major
B.A., History, Washington University
Master’s Degree, major
M.L.A., Literature and History, The Johns Hopkins University
Doctoral Degree, research area, conferring institution
Ph.D., Curriculum and Instruction, University of Wisconsin-Madison
Favorite Quote:
“Students are not doormats – You can quote me.”
Area of research:
Tracking in high schools, how schools are social institutions and in part construct the society we live in by affecting children in various ways. I’m also now interested in science education. Most recently, I’ve gotten funding from NIH to study what the science curriculum is for undergraduates in colleges and universities, particularly what it is for underrepresented minorities.
Most of my research is ethnographic. One of our main questions for the NIH study is, what is actually taught in undergraduate science? That means going into classrooms on a fairly long-term basis trying to figure out what academic knowledge is being taught but also what students are taught about who should get to study science, who doesn’t deserve to study science. It does relate to how kids figure out whether they do or don’t belong in science.
Selected publications:
Page, R. (1991). Lower-track classrooms: A curricular and cultural perspective. New York: Teachers College Press.
Page, R. & Valli, L. (1990). Curriculum differentiation: Interpretive studies in U.S. secondary schools. Albany, NY: State University Press of New York.
Page, R. (2006). Curriculum matters. In D. Hansen (Ed.), John Dewey and our educational prospect: A Critical Engagement with Dewey’s Democracy and Education (pp.39-66). Albany, NY: State University of New York Press.
Page, R. (1999). The uncertain value of school knowledge: Biology at Westridge High. Teachers College Record, 100(3), 554-601.
Page, R. (1987). Lower-track classrooms in a college-preparatory high school: Caricatures of educational encounters. In G. Spindler (Ed.), Interpretive ethnography of education: At home and abroad (pp. 447-474). Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Publishers.
Becker, N., Echeverria, B. & Page, R. (in press). Science, Religion, and Education. In H. Varenne, E. Gordon, & L. Lin (Eds.), Comprehensive Education: Explorations, Possibilities, Challenges.
Page, R., Samson, Y., & Crockett, M. (1998). Reporting ethnography to informants. Harvard Educational Review, 68, 299-334. [Reprinted in B. Brizuela, J. Stewart, R. Carillo, & J. Berger (Eds.), Acts of inquiry in qualitative research (pp. 321-352). Cambridge, MA: Harvard Educational Review.
What I like about being at the GSOE:
I like the resources of the University of California, which do support studying things, reading about them, writing about them, conducting field work about them. Not all universities and colleges provide that. I like being at a research university. In particular, I like the students at UCR. They’ve been very good to me and I’m glad I’ve have had them in my life. And I like working with the faculty and students in the NIH research group – what a treat to have smart, hardworking and generous colleagues who are willing to tackle important, even “hot lava” issues in education and schooling – and who are a little wacky to boot.
How I discovered my professional passion:
I ended up working for about 10 years in high schools. Then I got to the point where I thought I understood how you did teaching, at least in high schools, and I realized that I didn’t want to keep doing something I had pretty much figured out how to do for another 25 years. I knew I was not cut out to be an administrator so I decided to go back to graduate school in educational studies – and that has made all the difference.
What reading do you have on your night stand right now?
Stern Men by Elizabeth Gilbert
How my students have influenced — and inspired — me:
Four of them got me started in science education . . . And the thing about teaching teachers, - which is sort of how I think about it - the thing about it is that they are very appreciative when you take teaching seriously, and adolescents in high school could care less sometimes. So I think that is part of why I have stayed.
One of the best questions a student asked me:
I think that happens all the time in teaching classes - that students bring up issues. You teach a short story like The Lottery in high school and you have taught it before so you know how you are going to teach it pretty much, but you also leave room for finding out what other people think about it. And you can’t do that and not learn something from people.
Interesting fact:
I have, almost since the beginning, had a lot of doctoral advisees so I began having meetings with them during the academic year at my house, which is about three miles from campus. We sit out on the patio when it’s not too hot or too cold or raining and talk about the things we’re interested in and working on – curriculum and teaching, interpretive research methodologies, and schooling and education as sociocultural processes, sometimes in our fieldwork, or in reading we’re doing, or in articles and dissertations we’re writing.
A favorite book from childhood?
Little Women by Louisa May Alcott
Leisure activities:
My husband and I have a small house in northcentral New Mexico that we retreat to during the summers. There’s an almost 13,000-foot mountain right out the living room window and the Rio Grande valley is in the other direction. We always have trouble getting used to how absolutely quiet it is. And we are serious gardeners, there and in California.