Ann Taylor

Ann received her Bachelor’s degree from Nottingham University, UK (geography), her Master’s from the University of Sheffield, UK (education), a Post-graduate Certificate in education from West Midlands College of Higher Education in Walsall, UK (geography and chemistry), and a Ph.D. from Washington University in St. Louis.

Ann has been a teacher educator in the U.S. for over twenty years. In the 1990s as a faculty member at Principia College, Ann served as Education Department Chair and Social Science Unit Head. After moving to SIUE, she directed an urban professional development school site. Until 2012, Ann served as director of SIUE’s undergraduate elementary education program, a position she held for over a decade. Between 2008 and 2013, she was part of the leadership team of the National Writing Project site at SIUE (Piasa Bluffs Writing Project) and served as its director for the 2012-2013 year. Out of this work emerged her role as co-director of the Cultural Landscapes Collaboratory, or CoLab, a theoretical networked innovation community of National Writing Project sites fellows and informal educators (such as museums) who share a common approach and way of working. In 2013, Ann came to UMSL as an associate dean for the School and Community Partnerships, where she continued to build strong programming in partnership with local educational stakeholders. The UMSL Teach suite of programs, at the undergraduate and graduate level, provides outstanding graduates for the teaching profession, while programming in counseling, school psychology, informal and higher education, and school administration complete the full range of quality offerings from the college. Ann became the Dean of the College in 2018 and remains committed to meeting the educational and workforce needs of our local, national, and international communities. 

Her teaching has included mathematics education, teacher leadership, and qualitative research methods courses, and she particularly enjoys working with educator-practitioners as they innovate their practice. As a former middle and secondary geography teacher in three urban public institutions in Sheffield, UK, her research has grown naturally from her own study of classroom pedagogy and culture. She is interested in how teachers come to learn, grow and innovate their teaching practices together through developing collaborative cultures and powerful learning spaces. Drawing on her background in ethnography and action research, she worked with her colleague Ralph Córdova (UMSL) and developed a practice-based theory of action, ResponsiveDesign. This theory grew out of their work understanding how the field of design intersects with theories from education, literary theory, and anthropology.

Her published research includes work on teachers’ noticing and orchestrating talk in their classrooms, teacher’s growth using Japanese lesson study, and teacher’s study of their pedagogy. She particularly enjoys collaborative projects where diverse points of view and different communities interact to enrich dialogue and deepen understandings. She has published research in the mathematics education, community college, and teacher educator communities, and she has been a principal investigator on federal and state grants that support teacher development and learning.