Mikela Bjork Ph.D.

Empathic listening and sharing of personal narratives are qualities that Mikela Bjork believes to be paramount to effective and authentic (teacher) education. She is curious to know what students' experiences are/were growing up; what challenges did they face and how do those challenges inform their identity as an educator/student/thinker?

Her pedagogy centers around social justice and self-reflexivity, empowering students with the skill set to recognize their own social location in their assumptions about their students' (dis)abilities. As a teacher of pre- and in-service special education teachers, she sees her job as multifaceted; it is equally as important for her students to learn about best practices, special education policy, and universal design for learning, just as much as it is important for them to engage in self-reflexive practices, willing to remain alert to their own biases and privileges that inform their everyday interactions with their students and colleagues.

She is driven by a constant desire to explore, question, and unpack identity formation, through a sociological and anthropological lens, with a specific interest in how our past narratives and identities inform our present narratives and identities and how these narratives, past and present, can inform, engage, and inspire students.

• Ph.D., urban education, CUNY Graduate Center
• M.A., philosophy, CUNY Graduate Center
• M.Ed., adolescent special education, Long Island University
• B.A., anthropology, Smith College

• Addiction
• (Dis)ability studies
• Gender and education
• Inclusive education
• Narrative medicine
• Public health and education policy
• Queer studies
• Social justice
• Special education
• Teacher education
• Trauma

• Bjork, M. (2019). Compulsory heterosexuality: Unsettling and undoing the hidden curriculum of heteronormativity. In B. Charest & K. Sjostrom (Eds.), Unsettling education: Searching for ethical footing in a time of reform. New York: Peter Lang.
• Bjork, M. (anticipated winter 2020). Shaming curricula: Special education and internalized otherness. In J. Lalas & H. Strikwerda (Eds.), Minding the margins: Daring to transform inequities with inclusion, justice and hope. London: Emerald Publishing.
• Bjork, M. (2018, April). Unlearning what it means to be in special education. Retrieved from http://www.redlands.edu/bulldog-blog/2018/april-2018/unlearning-what-it-means-to-be-in-special-education/
• Bjork, M. (2014). Troubling troubled: Subjectivity and the (mis)understanding of "troubled" girls. Italian Journal of Disability Studies, 4, 47–61.

• American Educational Research Association (AERA)