Abby Boehm-Turner
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Pronouns: she, her, hers
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Curriculum and Instruction
125 Peik Hall
159 Pillsbury Drive SE
Minneapolis, MN 55455 - abt@umn.edu
Areas of interest
teacher education, critical literacies, antiracist/anti-oppressive pedagogies, critical writing pedagogies, middle school education, narrative inquiry, qualitative/post-qualitative research
University of Minnesota, PhD in Curriculum & Instruction: Literacy Education
Hamline University, MAEd, Concentration in Urban Education
Grinnell College, BA in English, Minor in Education
Abby Boehm-Turner is a lecturer in English education and the Licensure Program Lead for the secondary English education licensure program. Before coming to the University of Minnesota, Abby worked for Saint Paul Public Schools for almost twenty years. In that time, she taught middle and high school English/Language Arts, taught and coached debate, worked as an instructional and peer coach, developed an English curriculum, delivered professional development, worked on equity teams, and mentored beginning teachers. She brings these experiences to her current work with aspiring secondary English teachers.
Abby’s doctoral research focused on using story--sharing, writing, and rewriting--to explore identity crises experienced by new and student teachers who are committed to antiracist, anti-oppressive education, but feel that they cannot enact the values they hold for all of the reasons: institutional, structural, emotional, and embodied. Abby is especially interested in writing as a research method: writing through to learn, writing as collaborative problem solving, writing about the things that are hardest to say, and interrogating the silences in the stories we write about students and teaching. She is curious about the ways beginning teachers might use writing and story-sharing to combat feelings of powerlessness and to move towards radical action in transforming white supremacist, patriarchal, capitalist educational spaces.
Courses Taught
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CI 1124: Global Stories of Education: Literature for Young Adults
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CI 5441: Teaching Literature in the Secondary School
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CI 5461: Teaching Composition in the Secondary School
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CI 5471: Clinical Experience in Teaching Secondary English
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CI 5496: Directed Experiences in Teaching English
Toedt, E., Schick, A., & Boehm-Turner, A. (in review). Leaving mother at home: Extending collective memory methodology to examine mother scholar identities. International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education.
Boehm-Turner, A. & Toedt, E. (2021). Social class and whiteness. In Z. Casey (Ed.), Encyclopedia of critical whiteness studies in education. Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill.
Toedt, E. & Boehm-Turner, A. (2021). Shame. In Z. Casey (Ed.), Encyclopedia of critical whiteness studies in education. Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill.
Boehm-Turner, A. (2020). Rereading and rewriting teachers’ stories of felt impossibilities. (Dissertation). Retrieved from the University of Minnesota Digital Conservancy, https://hdl.handle.net/11299/217793.
Sterner, S. K., Shopa, A. C., Fisher, L. C., & Boehm-Turner, A. (2018). “Finding layers in our stories: Using collective memory work to negotiate the self.” In E. R. Lyle (Ed.), Fostering a relational pedagogy: Self-study as transformative praxis. Boston, MA: Brill Publishing.