Quentin Sedlacek

Quentin Sedlacek is an Assistant Professor of STEM Education at the Simmons School of Education and Human Development. He holds a B.A. in Physics from Harvard University, an M.A. in Curriculum and Instruction from the University of Mississippi, and a Ph.D. in Race, Inequality, and Language in Education and Teacher Education from Stanford University. Prior to attending Stanford, he taught science and mathematics for five years at public schools in Mississippi and American Sāmoa. During his doctoral studies, he co-founded a peer mentorship program for graduate students and organized a yearlong event series centering the perspectives of LGBTQ+ people of color in education. After completing his Ph.D., he served as a postdoctoral STEM education researcher in the College of Science at California State University, Monterey Bay.

Dr. Sedlacek’s interdisciplinary research applies frameworks from social psychology, sociology, and linguistic anthropology to examine STEM education and teacher education from elementary school through adulthood. He seeks to understand how science teaching influences opportunities for student empowerment by reproducing or contesting hegemonic relations of language, race, and gender. In particular, he is interested in the roles that racialized and gendered ideologies of language play in shaping teacher practices and student experiences. To pursue this research, Dr. Sedlacek draws upon a diverse methodological toolbox including interviews, focus groups, classroom observations, surveys, and experiments. His teaching and professional development work focus on equitable STEM education, reading and writing in science classrooms, and culturally relevant pedagogy.

Some of his most recent work has appeared in the International Journal of Science Education, Review of Research in Education, and the Journal of Women and Gender in Higher Education.

Peer-Reviewed Publications

Sedlacek, Q. C., & Lomelí, K. (Accepted). Towards authentic purposes for student science writing using culturally relevant pedagogy. Cultural Studies of Science Education. 

Sedlacek, Q. C., Amador, L., Beasley, E., Malech, K., Vigil, V., Haeger, H., Gray, C. V., & Slown, C. D. (2023). Two stories to tell: Racial equity and the impact of different instructor adaptations to COVID-19. Online Learning, 27(3), 271-296.https://doi.org/10.24059/olj.v27i3.3214 *

Sedlacek, Q. C., Charity Hudley, A. H., & Mallinson, C. M. (2023). Surveying the landscape of college teaching about African American Language. Linguistics & Education, 77(2023), 101189. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.linged.2023.101189

Villa III, A. M., Sedlacek, Q. C., & Pope, H. F. (2023). I DiG STEM: A teacher professional development on equitable digital game-based learning. Education Sciences, 13(964), 1-23. https://doi.org/10.3390/educsci13090964

Sedlacek, Q. C., & Murdock-Perriera, L. A. (2023). Quantifying elementary teachers’ foreknowledge about their students. Social Psychology of Education, 26, 639–672. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11218-023-09764-4

Sedlacek, Q. C. (2023). “Stealing from the language”: Interest convergence and teachers’ advocacy for language-inclusive practices. English Teaching: Practice & Critique, 22(1), 112-130. https://doi.org/10.1108/ETPC-03-2022-0037

Román, D., Arias, J. M., Sedlacek, Q. C., & Pérez, G. (2022). Exploring conceptions of creativity and Latinidad in experiential environmental education through the lens of culturally sustaining pedagogy. Review of Research in Education 46, 32-63. https://doi.org/10.3102/0091732X221084332 

Stanfield, E., Slown, C. D., Sedlacek, Q. C., & Worcester, S. E. (2022). A course-based undergraduate research experience (CURE) in Biology: Developing systems thinking through field experiences in restoration ecology. CBE-Life Sciences Education 21(ar20), 1-16. https://doi.org/10.1187/cbe.20-12-0300

Kuan, J., & Sedlacek, Q. C. (2022). Does it matter if I call it a CURE? Identity development in online entrepreneurship coursework. Scholarship and Practice of Undergraduate Research 6(1), 23-31.

Oehlman, N., Haeger, H., Sedlacek, Q. C., & Amador, L. (2022). Write it down to up the impact: Authentic and reflective writing to maximize the impact of undergraduate research. Scholarship and Practice of Undergraduate Research 5(4), 35-36. *

Sedlacek, Q. C., Gray, C. V., Vigil, V., Gonzales, B., & Slown, C. D. (2022). Professional learning that models components of course-based undergraduate research experiences. Scholarship and Practice of Undergraduate Research 5(4), 24-33. *

Sedlacek, Q. C. (2021). Experimental evidence of disparities in biology teachers’ responses to student writing. International Journal of Science Education, 43(14), 2351-2373. https://doi.org/10.1080/09500693.2021.1963499

Sedlacek, Q. C., & Darling-Hammond, K. (2021). ProjectQED: Building an inclusive department for queer and trans students, staff, and faculty. Journal of Women and Gender in Higher Education, 14(2), 228-231. https://doi.org/10.1080/26379112.2021.1950007

Lemmi, C.; Brown, B.; Wild, A.; Zummo, L.; & Sedlacek, Q. C. (2019). Language ideologies in science education. Science Education, 103(4), 854-874. https://doi.org/10.1002/sce.21508

Murdock-Perriera, L. A., & Sedlacek, Q. C. (2018). Questioning Pygmalion in the twenty-first century: The formation, transmission, and attributional influence of teacher expectancies. Social Psychology of Education, 21(3), 691-707.https://doi.org/10.1007/s11218-018-9439-9

Osborne, J., Sedlacek, Q. C., Friend, M., and Lemmi, C. (2016). Learning to read science. Science Scope, 40(3), 36-42. 

Raymond, J., Korreck, K., Sedlacek, Q. C., Blair, W., Ghavamian, P., and Sankrit, R. (2007). The preshock gas of SN 1006 from Hubble Space Telescope Advanced Camera for Surveys observations. The Astrophysical Journal, 659(2), 1257-1264. https://doi.org/10.1086/512483

* Denotes publications with student researchers.