Aaminah Norris

Summer 2012 Fellow

Aaminah Norris is a PhD Candidate in the Graduate School of Education at the University of California, Berkeley. Her interest is in teacher professional development with digital technology, classroom instruction utilizing digital resources, and digital literacies as tools for access and civic engagement for underrepresented students. Her interests stem from the trajectory of her 15 year career in education and youth development in both schooling and out of school contexts. Prior to study at Berkeley Aaminah’s work experience included teaching and administration of public and private schools throughout the San Francisco Bay Area. As Project Manager with Alameda Unified School District, Aaminah was responsible for assisting the Superintendent and Executive Staff in the development of a five-year strategic plan to target student achievement and community engagement. In 2011-2012 Aaminah was awarded the prestigious UC Regents Fellowship and was lauded as a distinguished Graduate Fellow at UC Berkeley. Aaminah’s dissertation study will investigate the design and implementation of professional development provided to teachers whose goal is to integrate appropriate and effective digital texts and tools in their classrooms. It will concurrently document and analyze the actual teaching practices that are shaped by this approach to professional development in order to capture the impact and outcomes on the learning of these teachers’ students. A third focus will be on the nature of digitally mediated civic engagement projects that students create and the impacts on learning.