AJ Schiera
- Assistant Professor
- LITERACY STUDIES
- HUMANITIES EDUCATION
- TEACHER LEARNING, RESEARCH & PRACTICE
Miramontes Baca Education Building, Room 244C
University of Colorado at Boulder
249 UCB
Boulder, CO 80309
Pronouns: he/him
AJ Schierais an Assistant Professor of Literacy Studies and affiliated faculty in Teacher Learning, Research & Practice. His research focuses on integrating justice-oriented and practice-based teacher education approaches, democratizing teacher education by including youth and local practitioners, and exploring how novice social studies teachers learn to facilitate discussions. AJ began his career in education as a high school history, government, and psychology teacher in Philadelphia public schools before (and after) earning his doctorate at the University of Pennsylvania. He was previously an assistant teaching professor at the University of Wisconsin–Madison.
A central strand of AJ’s research is to advance “Youth Participatory Teacher Education” (YPTE) as an approach to democratize teacher education by centering youth voice and agency. With collaborators at CU and other universities, he designs and investigates youth participation in university-based social studies methods courses, youth agency in teachers’ professional development, and youth co-design of teacher education program advisory boards.
AJ’s work also blurs university-school boundaries through partnerships with local teachers. He studies how local, justice-oriented teachers’ expertise on practice/praxis can shape teacher education programs; collaborates with mentor teachers to better link student teaching and social studies methods; and partners with Boulder Valley School District’s Teacher Academy at APEX to bring together CU teacher candidates and 11th and 12th graders who aspire to be teachers in an intergenerational community of practice.
How social studies teachers develop as discussion facilitators is also central to AJ’s research. As a research team member of the DISCUSS Philly project, he studies how novice teachers learn to enact this complex classroom practice.
EDUC 4316/5316 Nature of Social Studies
EDUC 4330/5330 Secondary Social Studies Methods I
EDUC 4355/5355 Secondary Social Studies Methods II
EDUC 8103 Special Topics in Literacy Research
EDUC 8135 Theories and Methodologies for Examining Teacher Learning — offering in Spring 2027
Schiera, A. J., & del Calvo, A. O. (2026). Youth Participatory Teacher Education Rehearsals: Working with youth to shape novice teacher learning. Action in Teacher Education.
Schiera, A. J., & del Calvo, A. O. (2026). What youth want from discussions: Practice, participation, and democracy in social studies (teacher) education. Theory & Research in Social Education, 54(1), 30–66.
del Calvo, A. O., & Schiera, A. J. (2026). What do youth give feedback on when they participate in rehearsals of social studies discussion facilitation? Teaching and Teacher Education, 176, 105530.
Schiera, A.J., Carl, N. M., & Marshall-Butler, J. (2025). The Social justice core practices of Philadelphia educators: A Modified Delphi study. Journal of Teacher Education, 76(2), 160–177.
Conrad, J., Schiera, A.J., & Dym, A. (2024). Decentering teacher voice - And stance? Teacher candidates’ explicit and implicit disclosure in social studies discussions. Teaching and Teacher Education, 146.