Virginia
Navarro
Dr. Virginia L.
Navarro, associate professor in the Division of Teaching and
Learning at UM-St. Louis, began her career in education teaching high
school English and journalism at both public and private high schools.
Recently, she became Co-Director of Career Transitions, a funded
alternative certification program for critical need areas in St. Louis
Public Schools. Additionally, she writes about school/university
partnership work in preparing quality teachers, especially in urban
settings. Recently, she co-edited a collection of case studies for the
Urban Network to Improve Teacher education (UNITE) called Staying
Connected (2005) that analyzes school/university partnerships across
the country. She also wrote the final chapter for a 2005 Erlbaum book,
Designing Urban Performance Systems, that explores why
context
matters when assessing urban schools.
Dr. Navarro grew up on the south side of Chicago as the youngest of
seven children. Her education in Catholic schools included a
strong grounding in philosophy and theology and she graduated with
honors from Loyola University, Chicago, in 1968 with a major in English.
Her junior year was spent in Rome, Italy, and she continues to love the
adventure of international travel. At Washington University in St.
Louis, she received an MAT in English, and taught high school English
and journalism at two large public high schools. She then returned to
Washington University to complete her doctoral work in education; since
then Dr. Navarro has been teaching in higher education at UM-St. Louis.
She received a UM-St. Louis Chancellor’s Award for Excellence for
teaching in 2000, and with a group of colleagues was recognized for
innovative work in teacher education with UM-Systems Performance Shares
in 2001.
Supported by a federal Teacher Workforce Replenishment grant, Dr.
Navarro developed Mentor Workshops to help improve retention of new
teachers by providing trained mentors; she also developed a Character
Adventure Day for student teachers and supervisors to link experiential
team-building activities with the complexity of becoming character
educators. This work led to a Character Education Partnership grant with
Dr. Marvin Berkowitz to infuse character education across the preservice
teacher education program. Dr. Navarro is a consulting editor for the
APA journal, Psychology of Women Quarterly, and writes
contemporary book reviews for PsycCritiques. She teaches courses
about child and adolescent development as well as two doctoral seminars
on qualitative research methods and sociocultural theory.
With her husband of 36 years, she has raised four children, and she has
served in a variety of volunteer roles as an active member of her faith
community and as a La Leche League leader when her children were young.
Dr.
Navarro's research interrogates the social construction of identity,
including the way that school discourses shape cultural understandings
about gender, race, and class.