Emily O. Miller is Teaching Faculty in the Department of Educational Policy Studies (EPS) at the University of Wisconsin – Madison. Her work in higher education is informed by her experiences teaching in public schools. Emily spent 10 years as an elementary school educator, first as a second-grade Spanish-English bilingual teacher in Brooklyn, New York and then as a fourth-grade teacher in Ithaca, NY. As a teacher, she participated in school and community groups focused on social justice.
Emily uses qualitative research methods to understand how white education stakeholders challenge and/or (re)produce racial inequities in K-12 schooling. Her dissertation, How Race-Evasiveness Shapes Equity and Inclusion Efforts in a Predominantly White, Small-Town School District, documents how tensions between different understandings of race shaped equity and inclusion policies and practices in the school district. The project was supported by the Michael W. Apple Fellowship. Emily’s previous research experience includes program evaluation and quantitative analysis of survey data using the statistical program R.
In her EPS courses, Emily creates a supportive and inclusive learning community where students are actively engaged and think critically about educational issues. The courses she teaches include: EDPOL 140 Introduction to Education; EDPOL 200 Race, Ethnicity, and Inequality in American Education; EDPOL 300 School and Society; and EDPOL 585 Family and Community Engagement in Education.
Select Publications
- Posey-Maddox, L. E., Powell, S. N., Roda, A., Lenhoff, S. W., & Miller, E. O. (2025). Advantaged families’ opportunity hoarding in U.S. K-12 education: A systematic review of the literature. Review of Educational Research https://doi.org/10.3102/00346543241304766 .
- Miller, E. O. (2025). Learning as action? How white racial ignorance limits equity work in schools and communities. International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education https://doi.org/10.1080/09518398.2025.2502075.
- Miller, E. O. (2024). The (im)possibility of interrupting Midwest Nice in a predominantly white, small-town school district. Education Sciences, 14(4), 1-15. https://doi.org/10.3390/educsci14040412.