Educational Policy Studies

Elena Aydarova

Associate Professor

aydarova@wisc.edu

(608) 265-5714

215 Education Building

Aydarova, Elena

Download CV   https://elenaaydarova.com/  

Elena Aydarova is an Associate Professor in the Educational Policy Studies Department at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. Her scholarship focuses on the interactions between educational policy, policy advocacy, and social inequality across international contexts, including the U.S., Russia, and the Middle East. Drawing on critical, feminist, and decolonial theories, her research interrogates policy formation through the lens of theater and performance. Aydarova’s book Teacher Education Reform as Political Theater: Russian Policy Dramas (State University of New York Press, 2019) won the 2021 Outstanding Book Award from the Society of Professors of Education, the 2020 Outstanding Book Award from the Council on Anthropology and Education, and the 2020 Critics’ Choice Book Award from the American Educational Studies Association. In her research, Aydarova uses qualitative methodologies, including critical ethnography, comparative case study, critical discourse analysis, as well as social network analysis.

Education

  • PhD Curriculum, Instruction, and Teacher Education, Michigan State University, 2015
  • MA Linguistics, University of South Carolina, 2005
  • BA English, Odessa National University, 2003

Select Publications

  • Aydarova, E. (2023). “Whatever you want to call it”: Science of reading mythologies in the educational reform movement. Harvard Educational Review
  • Aydarova, E. (2023). Intermediary organizations, technocratic discourses, and the rise of accountability regimes in teacher education. Journal of Teacher Education
  • Aydarova, E. (2023). Shadow elite of transnational policy networks: Intermediary organizations and the production of teacher education policies. In In I. Menter (Ed.), Palgrave handbook of teacher education research (pp. 1709-1730).
  • Aydarova, E. (2022). Neoliberal fictions for the audit theater: University educators and administrators navigating accountability regimes. Anthropology and Humanism, 47, 133-146.
  • Aydarova, E., Rigney, J., & Dana, N. (2022). Playing chess when you only have a couple of pawns: Policy advocacy in teacher education. Teachers College Record, 124(9)
  • Aydarova, E. (2022). Shadow elite of teacher education reforms: Intermediary organizations’ construction of accountability regimes. Educational Policy, 36(5), 1188-1221.
  • Aydarova, E. (2022). Transform the world or adapt the student: Discursive shifts in the constructions of teachers’ roles and pedagogy in the Russian Federation. Paedagogica Historica
  • Aydarova, E., Rigney, J., & Dana, N. (2022). “If you are not at the table, you are on the menu”: How teacher educators learn to participate in policy advocacy. Action in Teacher Education, 44(2), 143-159.
  • Aydarova, E. (2021). Knowledge for the elites, competences for the masses: Political theater of educational reforms in the Russian Federation. Comparative Education, 57(1), 51-66.
  • Aydarova, E. (2019). Teacher education reform as political theater: Russian policy dramas. SUNY Press

Select Presentations

  • Aydarova, E. (2023). Shadow elite of teacher education reforms: Transnational policy networks, global neoliberal designs. Comparative and International Education Society.
  • Aydarova, E. (2022). Shadow elite of “science of reading” reforms and the construction of technocratic regimes in the United States. American Anthropological Association.
  • Aydarova, E. (2022). “A web of privatizers”: Science of reading advocacy networks in Tennessee. American Educational Research Association.
  • Aydarova, E., Roodsari, S. Z., Davis, M. M., Hatchett, M., Davis, E., & Croley, A. (2021). Global perspectives, local responses: Decolonial and antiracist explorations of teacher education practices, discourses, and spaces. American Educational Research Association.
  • Aydarova, E. (2020). Multiple faces of policy advocacy: Reclaiming teacher educators' voice, knowledge, and authority in the struggle for equity and social justice. Association of Teacher Educators Keynote Address.
  • Aydarova, E. (2020). Disrupting the disruptors: Reimagining policy advocacy in a post-truth era. Pennsylvania Association of Teacher Educators Keynote Address.
  • Aydarova, E. (2019). Peeking behind the curtain: Political theater of Russian education reforms. Invited Talk presented at the Center for European Studies and Center for the Humanities and the Public Sphere.

Select Awards and Honors

  • Outstanding Journal Article Award, Association of Teacher Educators, 2023
  • Outstanding Book Award, Society of Professors of Education, 2021
  • Critics’ Choice Book Award, American Educational Studies Association, 2020
  • Doug Foley Early Career Award (honorable mention), Council on Anthropology and Education, American Anthropological Association, 2020
  • Outstanding Book Award, Council on Anthropology and Education, American Anthropological Association, 2020
  • Concha Delgado Gaitán Early Career Presidential Fellowship, Council on Anthropology and Education, American Anthropological Association, 2019
  • Frederick Erickson Outstanding Dissertation Award, Finalist, Council of Anthropology and Education, American Anthropological Association, 2016
  • Outstanding Dissertation Award, Division K, American Education Research Association, 2016
  • Post-doctoral Research Fellowship, National Academy of Education/Spencer Foundation, (2021–2022)
  • American Postdoctoral Research Fellowship, American Association of University Women, (2019–2020)