Leah Master

Leah Master is a PhD candidate at New York University in Teaching & Learning, specializing in Childhood Education and Science Education. Initially trained in design and material culture studies at Bard Graduate Center, Leah started her career in museums as an educator and exhibition designer. After teaching multiple university courses and museum programs, Leah realized her true passion was teaching, so she obtained a dual master’s in museum and childhood education from Bank Street College of Education, which led to six years as a preK-6 STEM teacher, four of those in a dual-language school. In addition, Leah has nearly thirty years of experience teaching in nonformal spaces, including in her current role as an educator at a historic mansion museum and nature preserve.

Leah’s research interests include phenomenon-based science education, teacher education, student nonformal, environmental, and experiential education in science, feminist/new materialisms, posthumanism, climate change and environmental justice, and learning from indigenous ways of knowing. Her dissertation, Starting with the earth first: A framework for teaching science to preservice childhood education teachers, seeks to address some of the current problems in science education at the childhood level, for both teachers and students through an earth-first framework built on feminist materialisms, posthumanism, nonformal, environmental, experiential educational, and indigenous ways of knowing. Her research works with preservice childhood and early childhood educators.

In addition to her dissertation work, Leah Master is working as a consultant for the Smithsonian NESST project, “Teaching for the Anthropocene”: Supporting Teachers of Diverse Students to Teach Complex Socio-Environmental Issues Through Critical Systems Thinking, she designs curriculum for the Sands Point Preserve Conservancy, and she is enjoying writing and working with the other members of her Postfoundational and Posthumanist SIG graduate student council group. She has presented at AERA, NARST, ESERA, Society for Social Studies of Science, Cooper-Hewitt Design Museum, NYU’s Education Policy Research Forum, and will present at the NYU sustainability group’s Brown Bag Lunch.

When not writing, reading, or teaching, Leah can be found playing viola in her orchestra, singing in her chorus, crocheting, and making music with her talented husband and four daughters. Leah’s journey has brought her to a community of scholars who envision a way of doing science that considers how our entanglements can play a role in a beautiful, but ever-changing world, and she hopes to encourage future educators to think about their connections to the non-human and more-than-human parts of the earth, as well.

At NYU, Leah Master has taught several undergraduate and graduate courses, in both the Teacher Residency Program, and at NYU-Steinhardt’s Washington Square Campus. The classes she has taught include:

· SCIED.UE0210: Science in Our Lives: Science in the Community

· EMAT-GE.2105.001: How Can I Make a Difference with Environmental Science

· TR C9 GE2009.001-005: Module 5: What Do I Teach?

· CDED-UE.1141.001: Science and Health in Childhood Education

· TCHL-GE.2515.002: Adolescent Learners in Urban Contexts