The University of Toledo

Associate Professor

Lynne Hamer
Department of Foundations of Education

Gillham Hall Room 5000E
Mail Stop 914
Phone:  419.530.7749
Fax:      419.530.8447
lynne.hamer@utoledo.edu
Vita

 

Biographical Profile
Lynne Hamer, Ph.D.
Updated January 2009

Lynne Hamer, Ph.D., is Associate Professor of Educational Theory and Social Foundations of Education with a joint appointment in Educational Research and Measurement.  She received her B.A. in English and Education from Hamline University in 1985, and her Ph.D. in Folklore from Indiana University in 1994. At the graduate level, she teaches courses in Anthropology of Education, Educational Sociology, and Folklore & Education, as well as Qualitative Research Methods, Qualitative Research Design, and Qualitative Data Analysis.  She has been instrumental in designing and continues to teach two undergraduate courses: Schooling and Democratic Society, and Introduction to Education.  Most of her courses involve students in Service Learning, much of which she facilitates through the Padua Alliance, a collaboration between the department and a local community center.  She has long been active in school-based professional development and local school restructuring and reform efforts.  Most recently she has been Site Co-Coordinator for a 5-year federal GEARUP (Gaining Early Awareness and Readiness for Undergraduate Programs) Grant, providing professional development at Toledo Public Schools’ East Toledo Junior High (now East Broadway Middle School) as teachers restructured their school to discourage dropping out and encourage postsecondary readiness.   Currently she is Co-director of the Padua Alliance and Peace Education Coordinator for Padua Possibilities, an Alternative to Suspension Program in collaboration with Toledo Public Schools, Pickett Academy, and the Padua Center.  She has applied what she has learned through these collaborations toward work in restructuring department and college practices at the university, providing leadership in graduate and undergraduate curriculum revision and interdisciplinary collaboration, and having served several years as the TSOC 3000 “Schooling and Democratic Society” course coordinator.  Her research focuses on continuities and discontinuities between traditional and institutional education, and the use of folkloristic theories, methods, and materials in promoting democratic and social reconstructionist education, with articles appearing in International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education, Educational Studies, Educational Horizons, Education & Urban Society, Middle Ground, Journal of Adolescence, Oral History Review, and  The Journal of American Folklore, as well as in The Encyclopedia of the Social and Cultural Foundations of Education.