Tianlong (Tian) Yu

Tian is a professor of education and department chair at Southern Illinois University Edwardsville (SIUE). He researches and writes on moral, citizenship, and multicultural education in both American and Chinese contexts. He is the author of In the Name of Morality: Character Education and Political Control (2004, Peter Lang) and co-editor of Character and Moral Education: A Reader (2011, Peter Lang) which won an American Educational Studies Association’s Critics Choice Book Award in 2012. His Chinese translation of Nel Noddings’ The Challenge to Care in Schools won China National Education Book Award in 2004. His most recent publications on civics and citizenship education appeared in Citizenship Teaching & Learning, and Chinese Education & Society. He is currently working on a narrative study of the experience of Chinese intellectuals under political repression and implications for democracy and citizenship. Tian has been a member of AERA since 2002. Before being elected Chair of the Democratic Citizenship in Education SIG, he served as its Program Chair in 2019-2020, and Treasurer-Secretary for the Confucianism, Taoism, and Education SIG in 2008-2011.

Melissa is an Assistant Professor of Education Policy & Leadership in the College of Education at Marquette University, where she leads work in social studies education. Her research examines the enactment of  educational justice in diverse settings, most specifically looking at democratic pedagogies that promote equity and youth empowerment, such as critical approaches to civic education. Most recently, her work is exploring whiteness in relation to democratic and justice-oriented pedagogies and how white teachers, specifically, can resist and subvert its hold in the classroom. Her work has appeared in Multicultural Perspectives, Equity & Excellence in Education, Teachers College Record, The Social Studies, The Journal of Adult & Adolescent Literacy, Theory & Research in Social Education, Theory Into Practice, and Intercultural Education, as well as in several edited volumes. Prior to joining the faculty at Marquette, Melissa was a middle and high school teacher (English and social studies) in the US Midwest (Chicago and Wisconsin), Los Angeles, and Guadalajara, Mexico.  She completed her PhD in Curriculum & Instruction and Education Policy Studies, with a focus on Multicultural Education, at the University of Wisconsin Madison. 

Ellen Middaugh, Ph.D. is an Associate Professor of Child and Adolescent Development at San José State University. She is co-PI for the CLARION (Civic Literacy, Action, & Reasoning in Online Networks) project, conducting research on youth civic development and engagement in the digital age. She previously served as Research Director for the Mills College Civic Engagement Research Group in Oakland, California and Senior Researcher with the MacArthur Research Network on Youth and Participatory Politics . She is co-Editor of the volume #youthaction: Becoming Political in the Digital Age (with Ben Kirshner). Recent publications include More than just facts: Promoting civic media literacy in the era of outrage and Did you know?!...Cultivating online public voice in youth (with Chris Evans).