Research Interest

My research interests have been shaped by my experiences as an anti-racist educator teaching and working in community, PK-12 and higher education contexts.  The employment of Endarkened Feminist Epistemologies (Dillard, 2010) characterized by critical inquiry, critical race theory, participatory action research, and narrative storytelling are at the core of how I approach the study of education, leadership, and critical multicultural pedagogies.  I am especially interested in studying the relationship between race, gender, class, educational policy, and leadership as situated in the narratives, material structures, and lived experiences of historically marginalized and minoritized peoples and communities.  Specifically, my research pertains to preparing educators to serve students who are diverse in ethnicity, race, culture, gender, gender identification, socioeconomic class, ability, sexuality, language, religion, nationality and the various ways that people have been "othered" across intersecting social identities. ​Critical inquiries pursued include teacher education, Black female youth and the school-to-prison pipeline, critical literacy, social justice leadership, grassroots community organizing, and critical pedagogy,.  These lines of inquiry allow me to engage in collaborative knowledge construction building towards a goal of positively influencing educator preparation and growth, as well as PK-12 public education more broadly and  equity and racial justice in education more critically.
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​Current Research Projects

Racing Leadership
In this long-term study, the focus is on educational leadership development for social justice.  In-service teachers who are seeking a K-12 administrative license, and who are enrolled in a masters level program comprise participants and case studies in this research examination that documents the ways in which critical pedagogy employed with a social justice orientation impacts the critical consciousness and social justice leadership development of emerging school leaders. 

This project includes analysis of the development of participant critical consciousness, including examining racialized, classed, and gendered processes and their manifestations through the intersections of work, family, school, and leadership responsibilities. This research also explores the ways that emerging leaders take up opportunities for school, societal and cultural transformation. School leaders are the second most important factor in PK-12 student success, and social justice leadership has emerged as a viable option to help school leaders address the diversity challenges of 21st century education, yet few studies in educational leadership position school communities in the U.S. to engage an effective social justice leadership praxis.  By engaging this study, I hope to explore what theories, lessons, and practices educational projects like this reveal.  I also seek to learn from the practices and reflections of my students, emerging leaders for social justice.

Walls, T. (2017, In Progress). Racing transformational leadership/transforming leadership through race. 

Seeds of Justice
This research is framed in critical autoethnographic inquiry and participatory action research.  Employing critical professional development (CPD) (Kohli, Picower, Martinez, and Ortiz, 2015), it is designed to provide teachers and educaitonal leaders of color committed to racial justice with a bridge to close the gap between theory and praxis, by equipping them with tools to engage in problem-posing around their racialized and gendered experiences in PK-12 education and its relationship to the national teacher of color shortage crisis.
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The purpose of the research is to provoke reflective analysis on, and answers to three critically themed questions: “Why do so few people want to teach anymore?” “What have we done to teaching to make it so unattractive?” and “What (or who) caused this, and what can we do to fix it?”  It aims to engage teachers in critical inquiry, reflection, and dialog (Freire, 1970) in order to problematize the national teacher, and teacher of color shortage.  Drawing on critical race theory (CRT) diverse PK-16+ teachers critically examine their gendered and racialized teaching experiences, and reflect on these experiences, including considering how school reform initiatives such as merit based evaluations (Smith, 2014), high stakes testing (Au, 2010) and no tolerance policies (Skiba et. al, 2012) impact their retention and effectiveness within the field, and/or whether or not these experiences exacerbate the problem of the national teacher crisis.  ​

Walls, T., Cornejo, M.N., Park, S., Plachowski, T., and Reid, E. (2018).  Sowing seeds of justice: feminists’ reflections on building a social justice movement in the southwest. In Grant, M. C. (Ed). Equity, equality and reform in contemporary public education.