Bonnie Tai

Bonnie Tai is a faculty member in Educational and Human Studies. Her primary teaching and research interests focus on the intersection between identity, power, and knowledge. Two overarching goals have driven her work over the last twenty years: to enhance access, equity, and quality in education and facilitate teaching and leadership that values individual and group differences and helps communities effectively negotiate conflict and change. Courses such as Intercultural Education, Understanding and Managing Group Dynamics, Femininity and Masculinity Go to School: Gender, Power, and Education, and "Comrade, Worker, Parent, Mensch" Education and the State (team-taught with Gray Cox), explore the challenges and possibilities presented when individual, cultural, national, and international values and interests meet among teachers, learners, and communities. As peer, advisor, teacher, and mentor, Bonnie aims to help educators put theory into practice in intercultural education as well as experiential education, elementary (kindergarten through Grade 8) math and science education, education through music, and teaching English to speakers of other languages. In addition, she teaches courses in educational philosophy, curriculum design, research methods, and program evaluation. Her current research explores political and civic education from a comparative perspective, examining the aims and effective methods of teaching for global citizenship.

Senior projects she has directed have included research projects, business plans, and curricula. Some examples of these are:

• an ethnography of history education in a South African high school
• a multimedia presentation on diverse experiences of multiple chemical sensitivities that was developed for an emergent not-for-profit organization
• a business plan for an alternative school for students with learning disabilities
• an international human rights curriculum for high school students
• a pilot course on a newly developed underwater sign language for SCUBA divers, and
• a multi-day experiential learning program for middle school girls that involved bicycling across Cape Cod.
  

Bonnie received her B.A. in Humanistic Studies from the Johns Hopkins University. At the Harvard Graduate School of Education, where she received numerous fellowships as well as a multi-year research training grant from the Spencer Foundation, Bonnie earned an Ed.M. in Technology in Education and an Ed.D. in Learning and Teaching. There she served on the editorial board of the Harvard Educational Review. In addition to teaching at Harvard, California State University in Long Beach, and COA (since Fall, 2000), Bonnie taught Math and English at Mahalapye Community Junior Secondary School in Botswana. She has enjoyed conducting program evaluations for professional development institutes and other institutional or program strengthening initiatives such as a recent evaluation of a digital media-based program for homeless youth. As a violinist, she has performed with the Maitisong Festival Orchestra in Gaborone, Botswana, and the Maryland Womenís Symphony. When she is not working, she enjoys rock climbing, pick-up soccer, making music, and exploring new places.