I have been at Pacific Oaks since the College began, and I taught in the Children's School before starting to teach College classes. What I learned by studying child development has served as the basis for my understanding of human development and learning across the life cycle. Teaching adults, observing children, endless dialogue with colleagues (many of them Pacific Oaks College alumnae), and writing a lot of it down have provided me with a never-ending adult play experience in the social construction of knowledge.
I retired last year but continue active involvement as Faculty Emerita.
Select Presentations
Keynote speaker, AEYC (Association for the Education of Young Children) state conferences: New York, Arizona, New Mexico, Alaska, Hawaii, Colorado, Wisconsin, Washington, New Jersey, Vermont, British Columbia, Saskatchewan; Western States Leadership Network; First Nations Head Start, British Columbia; Singapore; Australia; New Zealand.
Workshop leader at all the above and at NAEYC national conference and Professional Development Institute, California AEYC, California Mentor Project, Australian Reading Association, Australian Early Childhood Association, and in Israel and Fiji.
Select Publications
Books (selected titles)
The Play's the Thing: Teachers' Roles in Children's Play (with Gretchen Reynolds) 2nd edition. Teachers College Press, 2011 (first edition 1992)
Teaching Adults Revisited. NAEYC, 2007
Playing to Get Smart (with Renatta Cooper). Teachers College Press, 2006
The Lively Kindergarten: Emergent Curriculum in Action (with Kathleen Evans and Kay Stritzel Rencken). 2001, NAEYC
Master Players (with Gretchen Reynolds): Learning from Children at Play. Teachers College Press, 1997
Emergent Curriculum (with John Nimmo). NAEYC, 1994
Teaching Adults: An Active Learning Approach. NAEYC, 1986
Articles (selected titles)
Play across the life cycle. Young Children, July 2011
The outdoor classroom project (with Eric Nelson) in E. Goodenough (Ed.) A Place for Play. Ann Arbor: National Institute for Play, 2008.
The Elephant's Child as caregiver, in B. Neugebauer (Ed) Professionalism. Exchange Press 2008
Leave no grown-up behind: Coming to terms with technology (with Judy Magee). Young Children, May 2004.
Creating culturally relevant holiday curriculum: A negotiation (with Karen Neubert), in C. Copple (Ed.) A World of Difference: Readings on Teaching Young Children in a Diverse Society. NAEYC 2003
"Every time they get started, we interrupt them": Children with special needs at play (with Frances Henderson) in C. Brown & C. Marchant (Eds.) Play in Practice. Redleaf Press 2002.
Collaboration, conflict and change: Thoughts on education as provocation (with John Nimmo). Young Children, September 1999
Creating environments where teachers, like children, learn through play, in B. & R. Neugebauer (Eds), The Art of Leadership. Exchange Press, 1998
Breaking the ice: Confronting status differences among professionals, and Constructing professional knowledge by telling our stories, in J. Johnson & J. McCracken (Eds.) The Early Childhood Career Lattice. NAEYC 1994.
Meeting the challenge of diversity (with Louise Derman-Sparks). Young Children 1992
Community Involvement
Consultant: Albuquerque, Pasadena, Salinas, Soledad, Juneau and Sitka Public Schools; Kyushu Otani Junior College (Japan), Pine Hill early childhood programs (Navaho), University of Victoria (BC)/MeadowLake Tribal Council child care training project, First Nations Child Care Quality Study (Canada); early childhood programs in Fiji, Thailand, Australia, New Zealand, Singapore; Head Start, migrant child care, Child Development Associate, NAEYC accreditation; editorial/advisory boards: Teachers College Press, NAEYC, Children's Environments
Resource Team leader, Partnership Project, Pasadena Unified School District and Pacific Oaks College
Associate Member, Faculty of Graduate Studies, University of Victoria (Canada)
DeLissa Fellow, South Australia College of Education
Professional Memberships
National Association for the Education of Young Children (NAEYC)