Kathleen is Professor Emerita of Teaching, Learning and Leadership in the School of Education at the Brooklyn Campus of Long Island University. She is the former Director of Teacher Education at Goddard College, and was the founding Director of the John Dewey Project on Progressive Education at the University of Vermont, a research and policy organization. She has written extensively about democracy and education, teacher development, curriculum, spirituality, unschooling, environmental education, arts in education, and educational futures in over 50 peer-reviewed papers and book chapters. Her books include Curriculum Wisdom: Educational Decisions in Democratic Societies, Understanding Democratic Curriculum Leadership, Defending Public Schools: Teaching for a Democratic Society, Unschooling in Paradise, and the forthcoming Neohumanist Education: Theory and Practice for the Anthropocene.
Kathleen was active in the free school movement in the 1970’s, and was a co-founder of a University Without Walls program with Indigenous people in Oklahoma. She was involved in the anti-nuclear movement leading to the cancellation of construction of the Black Fox nuclear plant. In the 1980s she was actively involved in the unschooling movement, support for lay midwives, and the establishment of numerous food cooperatives, and published an underground newspaper. Current board service includes the Institute for Social Ecology, Pacem School, InTandem Arts, the Starling Collaborative, and the Coalition for Community Schools. She works with Vermont networks dedicated to the transformation of schools and communities to be more sustainable, equitable, just, and joyful spaces.
