Thomas M. Philip

Thomas M. Philip is a Professor in the Berkeley School of Education, where he also serves as the Faculty Director of the Berkeley Teacher Education Program. He studies how ideology shapes learning and how learning is a site of ideological contestation and becoming. As a learning scientist and teacher educator, he is interested in how teachers make sense of power and hierarchy, and act on their sense of agency as they navigate and ultimately transform classrooms and institutions toward more equitable, just, and democratic practices and outcomes. His scholarship also explores the possibilities and tensions that emerge with the use of artificial intelligence and digital learning technologies in classrooms.

Philip is a Fellow of the American Educational Research Association (AERA) and of the International Society of the Learning Sciences (ISLS). His research has been recognized by the AERA Division K (Teaching and Teacher Education) Midcareer Award; the AERA Division G (Social Context of Education) Early Career Award; the AERA Division C (Learning & Instruction) Jan Hawkins Award for Early Career Contributions to Humanistic Research and Scholarship in Learning Technologies; the National Association for Multicultural Education’s Research Award; and, the National Academy of Education/Spencer Postdoctoral Fellowship.

Under his leadership, the Berkeley Teacher Education Program (BTEP) was awarded the 2023 AERA Division K Award for Innovations in Research on Equity and Social Justice in Teaching and Teacher Education and the 2024 UC Berkeley Chancellor’s Award for Advancing Excellence and Equity.

Publications

Available at https://berkeley.academia.edu/ThomasPhilip

Peer-reviewed Journal Articles

Philip, T.M., Souto-Manning, M., Anderson, L., Horn, L., Carter Andrews, D., Stillman, J., & Varghese, M. (accepted). Making justice peripheral by constructing practice as “core”: How the increasing prominence of core practices challenges teacher education. Journal of Teacher Education.

Philip, T.M., Gupta, A., Turpen, C., & Elby, A. (2018). Why ideology matters for learning: A case of ideological convergence in an engineering ethics classroom discussion on drone warfare. Journal of the Learning Sciences, 27(2), 183-223.

Philip, T.M. & Azevedo, F. S. (2017). Everyday science learning and equity: Mapping the contested terrain. Science Education, 101(4), 526-532.

The Politics of Learning Writing Collective (Philip, T.M., Jurow, A. S., Vossoughi, S., Bang, M., & Zavala, M.). (2017). The learning sciences in a new era of U.S. nationalism. Cognition and Instruction, 35(2), 91-102.

Philip, T.M. (2017). Learning from mobile technology: Challenges, commitments, and quandaries. Communications of the ACM, 60(3), 34-36.

Philip, T.M., Rocha, J., and Olivares-Pasillas, M. C. (2017). Supporting teachers of color as they negotiate classroom pedagogies of race: A case study of a teacher’s struggle with “friendly-fire” racism. Teacher Education Quarterly, 44(1), 59-79.

Philip, T.M., Olivares-Pasillas, M. C., & Rocha, J. (2016). Becoming racially literate about data and data literate about race: A case of data visualizations in the classroom as a site of racial-ideological micro-contestations. Cognition and Instruction, 34(4), 361-388.

Philip, T.M., & Olivares-Pasillas, M.C. (2016). Learning technologies and educational equity: Charting alternatives to the troubling pattern of big promises with dismal results. Teachers College Record (Online Commentary). Retrieved from http://www.tcrecord.org/Content.asp?ContentID=21616.

Philip, T.M., Martinez, D. C., Lopez, E., & Garcia, A. (2016). Toward a teacher solidarity lens: Former teachers of color (re)envisioning educational research. Race Ethnicity and Education, 19(1), 182-199

Philip, T.M. & Zavala, M. (2016). The possibilities of being “critical”: Discourses that limit options for educators of color. Urban Education, 51(6), 659-682.

Philip, T.M. & Garcia, A. D. (2015). Schooling mobile phones: Assumptions about proximal benefits, the challenges of shifting meanings, and the politics of teaching. Educational Policy, 29(4), 676-707.

Philip, T.M. (2014). Asian American as a political-racial identity: Implications for teacher education. Race Ethnicity and Education, 17(2), 219-241.

Philip, T.M. & Benin, S. (2014). Programs of teacher education as mediators of White teacher identity. Teaching Education, 25(1), 1-23

Philip, T.M. (2013). Articulating the purpose of a social foundations of education course through instructor self-interviews. Studying Teacher Education, 9(3), 203-218.

Philip, T.M., Schuler-Brown, S., & Way, W. (2013). A framework for learning about Big Data with mobile technologies for democratic participation: Possibilities, limitations, and unanticipated obstacles. Technology, Knowledge and Learning, 18(3), 103-120.

Philip, T.M. & Garcia, A. (2013). The importance of still teaching the iGeneration: New technologies and the centrality of pedagogy. Harvard Educational Review, 83(2), 300-319.  

Philip, T.M., Way, W., Garcia, A.D., Schuler-Brown, S., & Navarro, O. (2013). When educators attempt to make “community” a part of classroom learning: The dangers of (mis)appropriating students’ communities into schools. Teaching and Teacher Education, 34, 174-183.  

Philip, T.M. (2013). Experience as college student activists: A strength and liability for prospective teachers of color in urban schools. Urban Education, 48(1), 44-68.  

Philip, T.M. (2012). Desegregation, the attack on public education, and the inadvertent critiques of social justice educators: Implications for teacher education. Teacher Education Quarterly, 39(2), 29-41.

Philip, T.M. (2011). Moving beyond our progressive lenses: Recognizing and building on the strengths of teachers of color. Journal of Teacher Education, 62(4), 356-366.

Philip, T.M. (2011). An “ideology in pieces” approach to studying change in teachers’ sense- making about race, racism and racial justice. Cognition and Instruction, 29(3), 297-329.

Book Chapters

Philip, T.M. & Rubel, L. (accepted). Classrooms as laboratories of democracy: The role of new quantitative literacies for social transformation. In L. Tunstall, G. Karaali, & V.I. Piercey (Eds.), Shifting contexts, stable core: Advancing quantitative literacy in higher education. Washington, D.C.: Mathematical Association of America Press

Philip, T. M., & Curammeng, E. R. (2015). New starting points: Becoming Asian Pacific Islander educators in a multiracial and multicultural society. In N. D. Hartlep & B. Porfilio (Eds.), Killing the model minority stereotype: Asian American counter-stories and complicity. Charlotte, NC: Information Age Publishing

Editorials

Philip, T.M., Bang, M., Jackson, K. (2018). Articulating the “how,” the “for what,” the “for whom,” and the “with whom” in concert: A call to broaden the benchmarks of our scholarship. Cognition and Instruction, 36(2).

Garcia, A. & Philip, T.M. (2018). Smoldering in the darkness: contextualizing learning, technology, and politics under the weight of ongoing fear and nationalism. Learning, Media & Technology

Presentations and Professional Experiences

Activities and Honors

Honors

  • Spencer Midcareer Grant, 2015
  • AERA Division G (Social Context of Education) Early Career Award, 2014
  • AERA Division C (Learning & Instruction) Jan Hawkins Award for Early Career Contributions to Humanistic Research and Scholarship in Learning Technologies, 2014
  • National Association for Multicultural Education: Carl A. Grant Multicultural Research Award, 2013
  • National Academy of Education / Spencer Postdoctoral Fellowship, 2010
  • National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship, 2001

Specialization and Interests

  • Teacher Education 
  • Learning as Political & Ethical 

Degree(s)

PhD, Cognition and Development, University of California, Berkeley

BS, Electrical Engineering & Computer Science, University of California, Berkeley

Contact

Office #4206

School of Education
Berkeley Way West Building (BWW)
UC Berkeley
2121 Berkeley Way
Berkeley, CA 94720-1670

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