Rolf Straubhaar, Ph.D.

Dr. Straubhaar is an education policy scholar trained in anthropology who has co-written and co-managed numerous externally funded research projects, including his dissertation research on education reform trends in Rio de Janeiro (funded by the Fulbright-Hays Doctoral Dissertation Award), research on Teach For America in Los Angeles with Dr. Michael Gottfried (funded by the Haynes Foundation), and projects funded by the Gates Foundation and the federal Magnet School Assistance Program while working for Dr. Jia Wang at UCLA’s National Center for Research on Evaluation, Standards, and Student Testing (CRESST).

Upon completing his PhD at UCLA, Dr. Straubhaar took a research faculty position at the Center for Latino Achievement and Success in Education at the University of Georgia for three years, where he held research-focused and managerial positions on several large grants, particularly a multi-year study of culturally responsive pedagogy implementation among Latino students sponsored by the Institute of Education Sciences.

Prior to returning to academia, Dr. Straubhaar was an elementary school teacher and administrator in Washington Heights in New York City and on the Navajo Nation in Shiprock, New Mexico. Before teaching K-12 in the United States, He taught and held leadership positions in adult education programs in Brazil and Mozambique for several years.

PhD, Social Science and Comparative Education, University of California – Los Angeles (2014)

MA, Latin American Studies/Nonprofit Studies, University of Texas at Austin (2010)

Straubhaar, R., & Portes, P.R. (Online Ahead of Print). The social construction of Latino childhood in the New South. Global Studies of Childhood, 1-12, DOI: 10.1177/2043610616671068.

Straubhaar, R., (2017). The “power” of value-added thinking: Exploring the implementation of high-stakes teacher accountability policies in Rio de Janeiro. Education Policy Analysis Archives. 25(91), 1-22.

Straubhaar, R. (2017). Educational excellence versus educational justice: How Latin American policymakers respond to competing demands for internationally competitive and socially equitable education systems with accountability-driven governance. In T. Jules (Ed.), The global educational policy environment in the Fourth Industrial Revolution: Gated, regulated and governed (pp. 265-281). London: Emerald.

Straubhaar, R. (2016). Acknowledging and interrogating the place of race and privilege in comparative and international education. Annual Review of Comparative and International Education, 30, 71-79.

Straubhaar, R., & Gottfried, M. (2016). Who joins Teach For America and why? Insights into the  “typical” recruit in an urban school district. Education and Urban Society, 48(7), 627-649.

Straubhaar, R. (2015). The methodological benefits of social media: “Studying up” in Brazil in the Facebook age. International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education, 28(9), 1081-1096.

Straubhaar, R. (2015). The stark reality of the "White Saviour" mentality and the need for critical consciousness: A document analysis of the early journals of a nascent Freirean educator. Compare: A Journal of International and Comparative Education, 45(3), 381-400.

Straubhaar, R., & Friedrich, D. (2015). Theorizing and documenting the spread of Teach For All and its impact on global education reform. Education Policy Analysis Archives. 23(44), 1-6.

Straubhaar, R. (2014). The multiple influences on non-formal instructional practices in rural Mozambique: Exploring the limits of world culture theory. Comparative Education Review, 58(2), 215-240.

Straubhaar, R. (2013). Student use of aspirational and linguistic social capital in an urban immigrant-centered English immersion high school. The High School Journal, 97(2), 92-106.

School Law and Policy

Critical Pedagogy

Qualitative Research Methods

Latinx Education

Professional Development

School Leadership

Fulbright-Hays Doctoral Dissertation Research Award (2013-2014)

Council on Anthropology and Education’s Frederick Erickson Outstanding Dissertation Award (2014)