Congratulations to Alex Klapperich (PhD student, CIDE), who has been awarded the Graduate School’s prestigious Doctoral Dissertation Fellowship. Her dissertation, titled “Contending Purposes of Pre-Kindergarten: A Comparative Case Study of Early Childhood Education Policy in Minnesota,” aims to address a gap in research that explores how investment discourse with respect to Early Childhood Education (ECE) operates as a policymaking strategy that undermines the social justice imperative for ECE. She plans to explore how policymakers employ investment discourse and contrast their vision of ECE with that of educators, parents, and pre-K students. She will share the findings from this dissertation research to demonstrate the unique insights and transformative possibilities that emerge from consulting children regarding their schooling.

Klapperich became interested in engaging children in research after teaching kindergarteners English in Korea. She holds a master’s in Human Rights from the London School of Economics and a master’s in Early Childhood Studies from Ryerson University. After graduating, she plans to continue to pursue research as a tenure-track faculty member, whose work focuses on comparative studies of ECE and seeks to expand strategies for engaging in research with young students regarding education policy.

Klapperich, whose primary advisor is Roozbeh Shirazi, is the third OLPD student to receive the DDF in as many years (Tiago Bittencourt and Lisa Kaler received the award in 2019 and 2020, respectively).