Christopher A Sanderson

Interests

Research

My current research focus is on media literacy, social justice, digital literacy, digital inclusion, and digital equity. I strive to understand how student teachers can personally develop media literacy within their own instructional framework to provide this type of instruction to their future students. Additionally, how students Can use personal understanding to build and understand the numerous social justice and equality topics throughout their education. I am further interested in how learners, communities, and geographic regions encounter digital barriers and how they work to overcome these challenges. I seek to understand how digital learning tools help bridge the gap between prior missed learning experiences while providing previously disenfranchised adult learners a new pathway for greater academic success. My research interests include increasing student use of instructional practices for future use and implementation as classroom teachers. Other interests include using digital learning tools to improve student engagement, knowledge retention, and overall enjoyment of learning activities.

Teaching

I strive to provide supported pedagogical evidence-based practices for pre-service teachers growth and understanding for them to build upon and increase their potential for academic and personal success.

Courses

Scholarly Contributions

Proceedings Publications

• Oguilve, V., Wen, W., Castek, J., Sanderson, C. A., & Pineda, Z. (2022, November). Participatory Learning: Educators Designing Media to Expand Global Perspectives. In Proceedings of EdMedia + Innovate Learning, Volume 2022, 1016-1025.
  More info

  This study examined the implementation of a professional learning series designed to develop educators' intercultural competencies, global and digital literacies by creating Virtual Field Experiences (VFEs). VFEs are immersive digital, multimodal, and multisensory learning experiences. The study examined how the design of VFEs can offer opportunities to globalize the curriculum. The study was conducted in the Southwestern US. Data were collected from a 3-session online professional development series. Data collection and analysis included pre- and post- surveys, observations, semi-structured retrospective interviews and the analysis of educators’ VFE projects. Data explored how implementation in educators’ teaching practices affected themselves and their students. Researchers examined educators’ reflections as well as stories of implementation of student-created VFEs projects. Findings suggest that the process of designing VFEs encourages educators and their students to create culturally responsive materials that are inclusive of multiple perspectives. Educators appeared to gain a deeper understanding of culture and intercultural teaching as they explored concepts like the cultural iceberg, essentialism, and identity complexity. Designing VFEs sparked educators’ reflective thinking on their teaching practices and involvement of their students in creating their own VFEs. VFEs can be used flexibly to experience cultures, identities, languages, and global communities.