Alta “Joy” Broughton, Ph. D., is a trilingual special educator, inclusion advocate, teacher educator, and educational researcher. Across all of these domains she is dedicated to conscientização; the practice of becoming more human through adopting a critical habit of mind to perceive the social, political, and economic inequities present in educational settings, engage in dialogue, and advocating for systemic change.
If I do not love the world—if I do not love life—if I do not love people—I cannot enter into dialogue. (Freire, 1970, p. 90)
Through promoting the practice of critical consciousness in teacher education, she aims to improve the equitable education of emergent bilingual students who may or may not have learning disabilities. Joy has published works addressing issues of teacher preparation, leadership in special education, and disproportionate identification of emergent bilinguals in peer-reviewed national and international journals. Currently, she is the Co-Principal Investigator on the California Commission on Teacher Credentialing Capacity Building Grant to establish a LEA-IHE Bilingual General/Special Education Teacher Residency and the CalEPIC Educator Preparation Program Transformation Grant, funded through the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.
