Advancing Civic Education

Paula McAvoy earned her PhD in philosophy of education in 2010 at UW-Madison’s Department of Educational Policy Studies. Since then, she has worked as an assistant professor at Illinois State, an associate program officer at the Spencer Foundation and as the Director of the Center for Ethics and Education at UW-Madison. Prior to this, she taught high school social studies for 10 years at the Foothill Middle College Program in Los Altos, California.

Dr. McAvoy is the PhD coordinator for the Social Studies Program Area of Study.

Her research focuses on philosophical and empirical questions concerning the relationship between schools and democratic society. She address two broad questions:
1. What educational aims and practices are most appropriate for preparing young people for living within a non-ideal democratic society (e.g. structural inequalities, political polarization)?
2. How should teachers and administrators make professional judgments about the dilemmas they face given non-ideal conditions? For example, what ethical challenges do teachers encounter when they engage students in discussions of controversial political issues?

Dr. Hoggan is a Professor in the Educational Leadership, Policy and Human Development Department. His research addresses transformative learning, or those experiences that dramatically affect how people experience, conceptualize, and interact with the world around them. He has studied transformative learning with a wide range of research participants, including postsecondary and graduate students, cancer survivors, military veterans, and migrants.

Since 2019, Dr. Hoggan has been extensively involved in research and engagement projects in Central and Eastern Europe, including research on the learning needs of migrants and the receiving society in the wake of the influx of refugees from Syria (2015) and Ukraine (2022). In 2019-2021, He has been a visiting professor at the Zentrum Flucht und Migration (Center for Flight and Migration) at the Katholische Universität Eichstätt-Ingolstadt University (Germany) and the Department of Psychology at the University of Padua (Italy). He is a founding member of the Deutsch-Ukrainischer Dialog association, which facilitates support for Ukrainian refugees in southern Germany, as well as the integration between refugees and the local community.

Emanating from this work with migrants and their host communities is a key contemporary focus of Dr. Hoggan’s work: civic learning in adulthood. An Editorial Board Member of the UNESCO Chair of Lifelong Learning in Kyiv, Ukraine, Dr. Hoggan delivers regular lectures on “Learning for Democracy” to four participating Ukrainian universities. He is also Co-director of the “Institute of Civic Studies and Learning for Democracy.”

My work has multiple threads, all aimed at empowering young people and fostering inclusive environments. My primary research examines how students make sense of race and culture in their school environments and shows that inclusive educational environments can bolster motivation, a sense of belonging, and academic success. I’m working toward understanding how students develop their knowledge and motivation for addressing systemic inequalities in society through informal and formal learning experiences. A newer interest of mine lies in supporting students of color as they integrate their academic and racial identities in STEM fields.

In my outreach, I help young people tell stories that raise awareness and inspire positive change in their communities through initiatives like #PassTheMicYouth, PassTheMic Camp, and TEDxYouth@Chavis Way. My efforts extend to organizing civic education events such as Dining with Democracy, which are designed to cultivate productive dialogue across diverse perspectives and encourage constructive engagement in democratic processes. Additionally, through a STEM curriculum called Escape Room Camp, I apply socioemotional learning principles to teach game design to middle and high school students and encourage kids to be welcoming and socially responsible gamers.

I received my bachelor’s degree in psychology from Agnes Scott College and a PhD in education and psychology from the University of Michigan. I was also a National Science Foundation Postdoctoral Fellow at Michigan State University. For fun, I play, run, and do research on escape rooms.