Janel Anderson

Janel Anderson (she/her/her), PhD is an alumnus (’23) of the UW Department of Educational Leadership and Policy Analysis. Janel’s work investigates the way care expectations impact teachers’ working conditions. Her research and leadership focus on the way the gendered socialization of teachers as well as intensifying community expectations have contributed to the reproduction of motherhood within teachers’ work.  Janel’s work is designed to improve teacher retention and student outcomes through reforms that nourish strong non-oppressive schools for both students and teachers. Before becoming a care scholar Janel was an award-winning high school teacher. In 2023 Janel’s dissertation “Care Labor and the American Teacher”, won the American Educational Research Association’s Selma Greenburg Outstanding Dissertation Award (2023). Her recent paper titled “Teach Like a Mother” was featured at the Caring Futures Conference at the American University of Paris. She has a forthcoming co-authored paper titled “‘Sometimes It’s Hard to Do the Right Thing:’ A Spectrum of How PK-12 District Administrators Understand Gender Diversity Policy Protections and Implementation”. Janel’s work, “Care Ethics in Education” will be part of the forthcoming Bloomsbury Encyclopedia of Social Justice in Education. Janel is an Assistant Professor of Educational Leadership at Gonzaga University in Spokane, Washington.